Category: Talk

Talk

Led by Christian Michel, this special edition of the Café Philo will be the occasion to discuss the legacy of May 68 and its commemorations today, starting with the question: “Was the May 68 movement elitist, anti-populist and anti-democratic?”

Talk

‘All the characters have a close relationship with words - the words they read, the words they speak and finally the words of love.’ Waterstones Book of the Month in 2016, The Reader on the 6:27 has been a big success in France and in the UK. Its author, Jean-Paul Didierlaurent will be in conversation with Ann Morgan, from the blog Reading the World, and translator Ros Schwartz.

This event is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Apologies for the inconvenience

Related / Latest Publications:

	Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, The Reader on the 6:27, translated by Ros Schwartz (Pan Macmillan, November 2016)
	Jean-Paul Didierlaurent, The Rest of Their Lives, translated by Ros Schwartz (Pan Macmillan, October 2017)

Talk

Goncourt Prize-winning Lullaby (Faber) is a compulsive, riveting and bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity and motherhood. Its author Leïla Slimani, a frequent commentator on women's rights and a prominent advocate for francophone language and culture, will be in conversation with Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon and The Trick to Time (Vintage).

Chaired by writer and journalist Bidisha.

This event is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Apologies for the inconvenience

Related / Latest Publications:

	Leïla Slimani, Lullaby, translated by Sam Taylor (Faber&Faber, January 2018)
	Kit de Waal, My Name is Leon (Viking, May 2016)
	Kit de Waal, The Trick to Time (Viking, March 2018)

Talk

Noémi Lefebvre’s Blue Self-Portrait (Les Fugitives) is a novel of angst and high farce, caught between contrary impulses to remember and to ignore. She will be in conversation with Baileys Prize for Women’s fiction winner Eimear McBride, whose latest novel is The Lesser Bohemians (Faber). Chaired by translator Sophie Lewis.

Following this dialogue, Noemi will be joined by two up and coming writers from Editions Verticales: Pierre Senges, known for his radio adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, as well as for his quirky, poetic Lichtenberg Fragments (Dalkey Archive), and Quebec-born Hélène Frédérick. Conversations with the writers will be accompanied by a series of readings on realism, literary debt and new forms of writing, introduced by Emmanuel Bouju (IUF) and Jeanne Guyon (Verticales).

In partnership with the Literature under Constraint programme (IMLR), Editions Verticales and IUF (Institut Universitaire de France).

Related / Latest Publications:

	Noémi Lefebvre, Blue Self-Portrait, translated by Sophie Lewis (Les Fugitives, June 2017)
	Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians (Faber&Faber, September 2016)
	Hélène Frédérick, Forêt Contraire (Verticales, February 2014)
	Pierre Senges, Antonio de Guevara, The Major Refutation, translated by Jacob Siefring (Contra Mundum Press, December 2016)
	Pierre Senges, Fragments of Lichtenberg, translated by Gregory Flanders (Dalkey Archive Press, January 2017)
	Eimear McBride, A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing (Galley Beggar Press, June 2013)

Talk and Screening

Talented French publisher and film director Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, founder of POL, died in January 2018. In a series of pop-up readings introduced by writer and translator Frédéric Boyer, two of Paul's authors, Goncourt prize winner Atiq Rahimi and Medicis prize winner Marie Darrieussecq, will be joined by guests Catriona Seth, Adrian Rifkin, Christopher MacLehose, Dominic Glynn and Stefan Tobler, who will read from some of the best authors he published: Georges Perec, Marguerite Duras, Jean-Louis Schefer, Olivier Cadiot, Emmanuelle Pagano, Emmanuel Carrère...

Followed by an exceptional screening, in French, of Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens' film Editeur.

Related events:

	Atiq Rahimi
	Marie Darrieussecq

Related / Latest Publications:

	Marie Darrieussecq, Pig Tales, translated by Linda Coverdale (Faber&Faber, June 2003)
	Marie Darrieussecq, Being Here is Everything, translated by Penny Hueston (Semiotext(e), April 2018)
	Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone, translated by Polly McLean (Vintage, January 2011)

Talk

In Being Here Is Everything (Semiotext(e)) Marie Darrieussecq traces the short, obscure, and prolific life of the German expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), who despite being a woman became one of her generation’s preeminent artists. In this exceptional London appearance, Marie Darrieussecq will also be talking about her other books, including Pig Tales (Faber).
Chaired by Lisa Allardice.

Related event:

Publishing à la française: Frédéric Boyer, Atiq Rahimi & Marie Darrieussecq

Related / Latest Publications:

	Marie Darrieussecq, Pig Tales, translated by Linda Coverdale (Faber&Faber, June 2003)
	Marie Darrieussecq, Being Here is Everything, translated by Penny Hueston (Semiotext(e), April 2018)

Talk

Writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi left Afghanistan for France in the 1980s, where he spent 18 years in exile. He won the 2008 Goncourt Prize for The Patience Stone (Penguin), his first book to be written directly in French, as a way to escape the “involuntary self-censorship” he feels when writing in Persian. The novel portrays a young woman's attempt to keep her husband alive as she rages against men, war, culture, God. Atiq Rahimi has since continued to write about language, political violence, historical belonging and migration. In partnership with English PEN who have supported the English editions of Patience Stone and A Curse on Dostoevsky.
Chaired by Antonia Byatt.

Related event:

Publishing à la française: Frédéric Boyer, Atiq Rahimi & Marie Darrieussecq

Related / Latest Publication:

Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone, translated by Polly McLean (Vintage, January 2011)

Talk

A new voice in literary fiction, Franco-Venezuelan author Miguel Bonnefoy made a breakthrough with his debut Octavio's Journey. Compared to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, his second novel Black Sugar (Gallic) tells the tale of a family’s changing fortunes in Venezuela over the course of the 20th century. Chaired by Daniel Hahn.

Related / Latest Publication:

Miguel Bonnefoy, Black Sugar, translated by Emily Boyce (Gallic, March 2018)

Talk

Celebrating Gaston Leroux’s 150th birthday, Dr Cormac Newark (Guildhall School of Music & Drama), Dr Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh) and Dr John Snelson (Royal Opera House) will explore the very many ways opera’s most famous off-shoot, The Phantom of the Opera, has inspired and infiltrated cultures around the world, offering a rich subject for re-interpretation in media ranging from ballet to musical theatre.

Experts from the worlds of literature, film and opera will look in particular at the very many screen adaptations of Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (1909-10) in places as far apart as Latin America and China, showing how this unique record of the most important social and artistic institution in the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’, Paris, has proved no less meaningful in the period since its publication.

This event is a collaboration with Screen adaptations of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra: Routes of Cultural Transfer, a research project led by Dr Cormac Newark of Guildhall School of Music & Drama and generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

https://thephantomonfilm.com/

Related / Latest Publication:

Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera, translated by Mireille Ribière (Penguin Classics, April 2012)

Talk

Laurent Gaudé won the Goncourt prize in 2004 for The House of Scorta. His latest novel Hell’s Gate (Gallic, tr. Emily Boyce) is a thrilling story of love, loss, revenge and redemption in Naples and beyond, in which Gaudé questions the power of origins, death and family ties. In the presence of translator Adriana Hunter.

Related / Latest Publications:

	Laurent Gaudé, Death of an Ancient King, translated by Adriana Hunter (4th Estate, 2004)
	Laurent Gaudé, Hell’s Gate, translated by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken (Gallic, April 2017)