The titles follow you through the Paris Metro, into lunch and cafe conversation, and are repeated constantly in newspaper editorials and television debates, their gloomy assertions having become the yardstick by which France now seems to judge itself.
France In Decline, The French Disarray and The French Arrogance - all written by French authors - hit the bookstores at about the same time this autumn, almost as if publishers had banded together for a bombardment of the national consciousness. While it's no secret that France is going through a rough patch, these books state that the country faces a crisis more serious than it has recognised so far. The first tome goes as far as to suggest France is slowly drifting into its worst nightmares of domestic paralysis and international irrelevance.
For a country that sees itself as the birthplace of enlightenment and a major world player, the onslaught of gloom comes as a shock, a wake-up call, or, depending on one's point of view, as no more than a sensationalist attack on the French 'exception'.
The immediate aftermath has been to turn navel-gazing into a national sport, in which the scores seem so far to be roughly even. On the one hand, reformists seize on some of these titles as further 'proof' that radical shock therapy is needed on almost every front so that France can assert its rightful place in the world, which is to say, on top. The left wing has responded by firing back different sets of statistics and measures of progress to argue that, rather than being perched over the abyss, France is generally doing all right, even if it is facing a few hiccups.
The book that has attracted the most attention so far, putting it near the top of best-seller lists, is France In Decline, written by historian and economist Nicolas Baverez. According to the author, the stakes are high not just for France, but for the world at large. The underlying assumption appears to be that only a country such as France can save the world from crises, including a deepening west vs Islam clash and the emergence of unrestrained, brutal capitalism in China and the former Soviet bloc.
Mr Baverez's sweeping, 135-page book says that France's troubles stem from a two-century-old history of state-citizen confrontation, along with extreme conservatism that survives today, making the country unable to adapt to a rapidly changing 21st century.
On the domestic front, the author cites an array of statistics to contend that France is sacrificing future development by failing to invest in scientific and technological innovation while using almost a quarter of its gross industrial product to pay for an unaffordable social welfare system. In the international arena, Mr Baverez describes French diplomacy as lacking in subtlety and the military weaponry to back it up. Thus, despite its intents, France has helped push the United States further into unilateralism. 'France knows what it doesn't want ... but doesn't know what it wants,' he writes.