I always tend to have this impression that the reason I hardly ever hear about modern French books worth reading is that there aren't really too much of those, but that seems hardly likely, I'm just not hearing about them.
That reminds me of the project I once started here at RAFO of reading and reviewing non-English language fantasy and sci-fi... as I recall, I got about two books far (one by Markus Heitz and one by Elisabeth Vonarburg, if anyone's curious).