Zazie, a little provincial girl from Berry, is impatient to take the Parisian subway. She is welcomed to Paris by her uncle Gabriel, who will take her around the capital and show her its most famous monuments for a few days. But Zazie is impertinent and rude and is really outspoken for a little girl of her age. The reader follows her adventures in the streets of Paris, swayed between disappointment and wonder, at a time when France also dreams of revenge on life, emancipation and freedom. Raymond Queneau describes, through the encounters of the little girl in the capital, a gallery of picturesque characters who are so many pretexts for this funny and amusing fable filled with philosophical reflections on identity, freedom and childhood.

Written as a burlesque parody of the great epics or picaresque novels, Zazie dans le métro has become a classic of French literature. Published in 1959, the novel launched the literary career of Raymond Queneau considered one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century in France. A popular novel that has marked generations of French people, it is also a pioneering book celebrated for the creativity and inventiveness of its language and dialogue. The book was adapted to the cinema in 1960 by Louis Malle.

We read this book in the summer of 2021.