The Babel guide has 150 original reviews of books by over 100 authors from France, Quebec, North and West Africa, Belgium and Switzerland. Each review provides a kind of trailer for the work and is followed by an excerpt as a taster. It introduces big names of French literature such as Sartre, Camus, Colette and Duras, and a collection of less familiar writers, such as Driss Chraibi and Madeline Bourdouxhe. It includes a database of French fiction translated in the UK since 1950, with original titles and current prices. This is the third in a series of accessible and illustrated guides to world fiction available in English translation, aimed at journalists, academics, teachers and the ordinary reader. The reviews let potential readers have a idea as to whether a work might suit them.