School's Out — Christophe Dufosse

A vertiginous black comedy by one of France's most exciting new novelists

Winner of France's most prestigious prize for a first novel, School's Out is a gripping re-imagining of Lord of the Flies, at once scarier and funnier than its prototype. When high school teacher Éric Capadis is found dead, an apparent suicide, his friend Pierre Hoffman takes over his class. The students in 9F are well behaved yet oddly menacing. Hoffman's colleagues warn him to watch out for them. But it's only when he agrees to accompany his charges on a school trip to the Normandy coast that he begins to understand the reason for their bizarre solidarity. School's Out is a triumph of nihilism and surreal wit.