This course will be structured around contemporary French novels which collectively deal with three important issues in post-2000 French society: class, gender and ethnicity (although not all texts will deal with all three aspects equally). All texts will have received wide critical acclaim, be available in paperback versions and have been chosen for their contemporariness, readability and appeal to a c.20 year-old audience as well as for the ways they reflect issues in contemporary French society. The focus of the course is not literary criticism , rather, it uses some recent, critically-acclaimed but popular and accessible literary texts to elucidate key aspects of contemporary French society and its vernacular language. Students will be expected to know the novels well and the focus of the classes will be on discussing French society in light of these novels, whilst also engaging with examples of vernacular French.