I have been helping a young French neighbour with her spoken English and also with the book she has been studying for her Bac English oral. She has had to read 'the Buddha of Suburbia' which she has found very difficult. Are there other students who have studied this book, or, what other books have been used for the oral? Thanks

Hanif Kureishi's "Buddha of Suburbia" dealing with racial and cultural identity is now a popular set book with English students in various European countries and also the US. There is a significant amount of online analysis available which may help your neighbour. Most of which, of course, is in English, but it may help her with the various themes of this novel.

Thanks, we found plenty of info on the net; I just wondered if it was the only set book and was told that there was a list for the teachers to choose from and was curious to see what the other choices were, as my friend found the book difficult, and, in fact, the teacher omitted one chapter from the texts for them to study because it was 'too pornographic'!

'My Antonia'. An easier choice, apparently!

My Antonia is dreadful! Other books on the list:
Pour les sessions 2011 et 2012 de l'examen du baccalauréat général, le programme de lecture de l'épreuve orale d'anglais, langue vivante 1 de complément, en série littéraire, est le suivant : William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's DreamHerman Melville : Billy BuddWilla Cather : My AntoniaVirginia Woolf : A Haunted House and Other Short StoriesDoris Lessing : The Fifth ChildBeverley Naidoo : The Other Side of TruthYann Martel : Life of PiLangston Hughes : Selected PoemsTed Hughes : Poetry in the Making (aussi disponible en CD)Hanif Kureishi : The Budha of SuburbiaRoy Arundhati : The God of Small ThingsMary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows : The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie SocietyI have no idea who chooses this list but there is very little on it that I consider suitable for studying with a class at the age and with the English level of the average bac student - the list has changed regularly over the past 10+ years but there have rarely been more than one or two books which I would consider doing with a class on it. The previous Shakespeare was Macbeth and that list included Frankenstein and Waiting for the Barbarians.
The good news is that this is the last year things will be done this way... next year there will be in-house assessment and compulsory orals for all students, not just some of them.