Paul Johnson

Haute Hypocrisie

The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism

By

University of Chicago Press 536pp £24.50 order from our bookshop

This is a timely book and I wish it were a better one. Anti-Americanism has never been more intense in France, especially at the highest levels. It is marching in step with anti-Semitism, which, thanks to the huge influx of militant Muslims, is now more bloodthirsty in France than at any time since the Vichy years, when Jews were rounded up, held in their thousands in the ‘Vél d’Hiv’ (winter-sports stadium), then entrained to Auschwitz. Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have a good deal in common, being largely irrational, contradictory, and often based on sheer ignorance.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Start your week with a dose of Russian Revolutionary zeal. Donald Rayfield reviews Tobie Mathew's 'Greetings From t… ,
    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    • From our December/January issue - here's John Banville's review of Colm Tóibín on the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and J… ,
    Follow Us