French Today is a profile of the French language in its social context. British and French linguists examine trends in French throughout the French-speaking world, and address issues around prescriptivism, gender and language, and regional languages and dialects. The collection includes overviews of work done in particular areas and deeper analyses of sociolinguistic questions. All examples and quotations are in French, with a mixture of references given in French and English. At the end of each chapter there are also texts in French, serving as illustration and as pointers to further...

This autobiographical novel is based on Strindberg's life in the 1870s and 1880s, and focuses on his marriage to Siri von Essen. It purports to be a vehicle for explaining to himself his role in the relationship from its ecstatic beginnings to its catastrophic conclusion. Strindberg was writing at the time of the modern women's movement and the intense Nordic debate on sexual morality, and the novel echoes on an anguished personal level the theme of the battle of the sexes. It is one of his many and varied attempts to write his own life, to use himself as raw material. The novel was written...