Cher Monsieur Philippe Bordas (When a Book Invades Your Dreams)

Épisode de One Thing In A French Day | Stories from Paris in French par French with Laetitia Perraut · 8 octobre 2026 · 5 min

Au café, on discute. C'est exactement ce qu'Anne-Laure et moi avons fait. En salle, pas en terrasse, car nous avions un peu froid ce matin-là. Et pour différentes raisons.

A Friday-morning chat in a café turns into an episode about the books that follow us into our dreams. I explain why reading Philippe Bordas, author of Les Parrhésiens, before bed leaves my brain buzzing, and how a friend's joke ("write him a letter!") made me dig out an old list of unforgettable people I have met, from a first job in the oil-transport business to a housing survey in the Paris suburbs.

The everyday frame (a café, a cup of tea, a bad night's sleep) is easy to follow for B2 listeners. As the story unfolds, the French gets richer: the colorful slang of a contemporary novelist who also invents words, and of one very colorful colleague, the kind of language you hear in Paris but rarely meet in a textbook. A good stretch for B2 to C1 listeners who want to hear French with real texture.

This autumn, the podcast letters are all about writing. With every episode, subscribers receive a letter with a writing workshop built on a real passage from the story. This week, two lines turn into a whole scene: text messages, a café conversation and, if you feel like it, a retelling. You will also find cultural markers to go further and a few things worth noticing. A simple, effective way to improve your written French, and by extension your confidence in French.

Philippe Bordas · Les Parrhésiens · argot parisien · Paris populaire · Montparnasse · littérature française · écriture · spoken french · learn french · french stories · authentic french · real french

Who is Philippe Bordas?

What is Les Parrhésiens by Philippe Bordas about?

What is Parisian slang (argot parisien)?

French novels written in Parisian slang

How to read contemporary French literature as a learner

How to understand French slang expressions

How to write a text message in French to arrange a meeting

What is a blocus in a French high school?

How to describe a conversation in a café in French

French podcast for advanced learners

© Laetitia Perraut – Éditions Café Anglais. Tous droits réservés. Toute reproduction, réutilisation ou fouille de textes et de données (TDM), notamment pour l’entraînement ou l’alimentation de systèmes d’intelligence artificielle, est interdite sans autorisation écrite (art. L122-5-3 du Code de la propriété intellectuelle).

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À propos du podcast

Dans One Thing In A French Day, je vous raconte quelque chose qui m’est arrivé dans la journée : une balade à Paris, une discussion en famille, une rencontre. Twice a week since 2006, I’ve been sharing a small piece of my day in France, in French. Not the postcard version of Paris, but real life,…

One Thing In A French Day | Stories from Paris in French

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