Focus on French contemporary fiction
Discussion in French with translation
Alleviating the burden of lockdown, books allowed for imagination to travel, to go for what Xavier de Maistre called journeys around one’s room. For its first post-lockdown public event at the library, the Institut Français invites you to meet and discuss with three writers who brightened and widened our confined days: Lucie Paye, author of Les Cœurs inquiets (Gallimard, 2020), Arnaud de la Grange, author of Le Huitième soir (Gallimard, 2019), Olivier Dorchamps, author of Ceux que je suis (Finitude, 2019).
Les Cœurs inquiets
A young painter sees a strangely familiar face appear on his canvas. A woman writes a last letter to her lost love. What they have in common is the absence that haunts everyday life, the tenacious company of ghosts from the past. Throughout a subtle hall of mirrors, their quests will come together.
Lucie Paye was born in Paris in 1975. She lives in London. Les Cœurs inquiets is her debut novel.
Le Huitième Soir (Prix Roger Nimer, Prix Erwan Bergot)
During the hellish battle of Dien Bien Phu, a young man remembers his life. Beyond the war, his story is that of man facing an ordeal. This book is about the resilience after an accident, the suffering of a son in front of a dying mother, the quest for meaning in the midst of the absurd. It is a hymn to brotherhood and to life.
Arnaud de La Grange is a journalist, foreign correspondent for Le Figaro in London, and a writer. Le Huitième Soir is his second novel, after Les Vents sombres (2017).
Ceux que je suis (Prix de Gaulle, Prix Esprit large, Prix du premier roman de la Ville de Paris)
Although surprised that his father wanted to be buried in Morocco, Marwan Mansouri agrees to fly the body home. Strolling through the streets of Casablanca, running into his father’s old friends, Marwan starts the process of truly laying to rest a man who was far more complex than he had ever realised.
Olivier Dorchamps was born in Geneva and lives in London. The son of a cosmopolitan family, he has dual, Franco-British citizenship. His taste for French literature led him to choose that language for his first novel, Ceux que je suis.
In partnership with La Librairie La Page
