The Class

Winner of the Prix France Culture/Télérama prize, The Class explores timely issues of race, class, identity, colonial history, immigration, and education, "suspend[ing] judgment and liberat[ing] the raw words of kids in a deconsecrated classroom" (Le Monde). The novel's eponymous film version, directed by Laurent Cantet, starring author Bégaudeau as himself, won the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.“The Class is a prime document of French postcolonial blues, though its relevance to American urban education could not be any greater if it had been made in the Bronx or Trenton or South Los Angeles.” –David Denby, The New Yorker

“François Bégaudeau's award-winning [The Class ] . . . trains the reader to look anew at the republican school and study the republican legacy with fresh eyes.” –Yale ReviewFRANÇOIS BÉGAUDEAU is the author of two novels: Jouer juste (2003) and Dans la diagonale (2005). In 2005, he published a fictional biography of the Rolling Stones titled Rolling Stones: Un démocrate Mick Jagger 1960–1969. A filmcritic for the Cahiers du cinéma and the French version of Playboy, he played in the punk band Zabriskie Point before becoming a teacher in France's public school system.