The Foreign Student: A Novel

A #1 bestseller in France, this is a nostalgic portrait of a French scholarship student’s discovery of America during the academic year of 1954–1955.
 
I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be American, like any ordinary student, because I figured that was my only chance to survive the immense loneliness looming ahead of me. I was elated to be there, in that remote Virginia alley, on that college campus. I was elated because back there, far away in France, my brothers would never experience this. And the school friends I left behind—they too were missing out on this tremendous adventure.
 
Soon the young freshman becomes seduced by American culture and the popular icons of the mid-fifties: Jack Kerouac, Elvis Presley, James Dean, Fats Domino . . . a green Buick convertible, drive-in movies, and pretty Grace Kelly lookalikes in tight cardigans.

Praise for The Foreign Student
 
“One of those books that is beyond criticism . . . a vivid portrait of life, American style.”—L’Express
 
“A love affair with America . . . told with precision, clarity, and warmth.”—France-Soir
 
“A Sentimental Education of the American South.”—Lu
 
“A grand risk, successfully realized . . . F. Scott Fitzgerald, French style. A splendid novel about a fragile, fugitive era.”—Magazine Litteraire
 
“The freshness of a first novel combined with nuanced reporting.”—Le Monde

This French bestseller by Labro, a journalist and filmmaker, is a semiautobiographical novel about a French scholarship student's adventurous year at an elite, all-male, unnamed Virginia college. In a delightfully witty style, Labro poses a traditional European upbringing against the equally narrow rituals of Southern society in 1954-55. Ignoring the similarities, the nameless narrator revels in American differences: the college's unwritten dress code, male friendships that lead to future wealth and power, the significant convertible, Fats Domino and rock 'n roll, and, of course, American women. His first relationship is with April, a black maid. In a revealing analysis of 1950s race relations, the narrator finds himself walking a thin line between his love for a forbidden woman and his desire to be accepted by segregated Southern society. In contrast, his second girlfriend is Elizabeth, a co-ed in the midst of rebelling against her monied Bostonian parents who would have her star in high society. He is unable to understand her rejection of a realm of which he has grown enamored. Labro's third novel successfully captures, through the eyes of an outsider, the essence of the American collegiate rites of passage that were all-important in the 1950s.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.