I'm trying to find the name of a fin-de-siècle writer/feuilletoniste/journalist who wrote very short fiction pieces based on crime stories in the Paris newspapers. A collection of these was published some time within the last ten years and was reviewed, or at least mentioned, in the New York Review of Books or the London Review of Books. Is there anyone out there who knows who I'm talking about?
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1 Answer
The most likely candidate is Félix Fénéon (22 June 1861 – 29 February 1944). A collection of his short fiction Novels in Three Lines (Nouvelles en trois lignes in French) was translated by Luc Sante and published in 2007. A review by Julian Barnes appeared in the London Review of Books on 4 October 2007.
("Nouvelle" does not mean "novel"; it refers to a very short narrative form; "short story" would be a more accurate translation. As far as I know, the term "flash fiction" did not exist during Fénéon's lifetime, even though the genre already existed.)