Customer Reviews

The Xenophobe's Guide to the French (Xenophobe's Guides - Oval Books)

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Amusing, if thin, book on France and the French. It is about 60% accurate, but is limited by its editorial raison d'etre of placing everyone in a Frog box. Many French are very much like those described in this book, but let's face it, all French aren't. France is a complex society with a complex history on an amazing piece of soil and with a multi-tribal origins. Basques like me are not like the long-boned Normans or the Celtic Bretagnes, and we all have funny accents to each other. Told from a British perspective, so unless you are tuned into Briticisms some of this will be lost on an American audience. But again, much of the content doesn't get past the intellectual level of "The Simpsons" in depth, but still every other page has something that makes you chuckle.

Note: this is not a guide book...it is a long editorial about points of French behaviour and culture.

The French are an unpleasant lot, eaters of slugs and gooey bits of horse, tormentors of small animals, chewers of garlic, and the bane of personal hygene salesmen.

This book shows them at their worst, and although intended as humour, demonstrates that many a true word is said in jest.