Talk
A new voice in literary fiction, 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.
Beyond Words FestivalTalk
Celebrating Gaston Leroux’s 150th birthday, Cormac Newark (Guildhall School of Music & Drama) unravels the many adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera from film through to cabaret. In partnership with the project Screen Adaptations of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra: Routes of Cultural Transfer, supported by the Leverhulme Trust.
Beyond Words FestivalTalk
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. Chaired by Boyd Tonkin, with translator Adriana Hunter.
Beyond Words FestivalProfessional Event
An occasion for translators to pitch the books they are most excited about this year, and for professionals to discover brand new literature from French-speaking countries. Introduced by translator Ros Schwartz, in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK.
Please contact books@institutfrancais.org.uk to attend
Beyond Words FestivalTalk and Live Drawing
Pénélope Bagieu’s graphic novel Brazen (Penguin) presents a series of portraits of 30 incredible women such as Josephine Baker, Peggy Guggenheim or Tove Jansson. Penelope will be discussing these rebel ladies with Mary and Bryan Talbot, who revisit the life of anarchist and Communarde Louise Michel in the graphic novel The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia (Verso).
Beyond Words FestivalTalk
In A Walk Through Paris (Verso) essayist and publisher Eric Hazan takes us through the radical history of Paris, city of the May 1968 uprising, but also of Robespierre, the Commune and Jean-Paul Sartre. Drawing on his own life story and experiences during the Sixties, Eric Hazan will be in conversation with Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse. Women Walk the City. Chaired by Ziad Elmarsafy (King’s College London).
Free access to the exhibition during La Médiathèque opening hours until 19 May
Beyond Words FestivalTalk
The mass protests that shook France in May 1968 were exciting, dangerous, creative and influential, changing European politics to this day. Mitchell Abidor, author of May Made Me (Pluto), will be discussing their legacy with Guardian journalist Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism. A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane).
Free access to the exhibition during La Médiathèque opening hours until 19 May
Beyond Words FestivalPhoto Exhibition by Philippe Gras
In May 1968, Parisian students marched down the street in protests that quickly spread throughout France. The country came to a near standstill. This exhibition of works by late French photographer Philippe Gras tells the story of May ’68, fifty years after the event. Juliette Desplat from the Archives Nationales will give an introduction to the exhibition on 14 May.
Free access to the exhibition during La Médiathèque opening hours until 19 May
Beyond Words FestivalVictor Hugo’s Les Misérables is the most loved, most read and most adapted novel of the nineteenth century. Prize-winning biographer and translator David Bellos argues that it outshines even its most illustrious contemporaries — for War and Peace, Madame Bovary, Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment were all published within a few years. David Bellos will talk about his new book, The Novel of the Century (Particular Books, 2017), which brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his epic work despite a revolution, a coup d'état and political exile; how he pulled off an astonishing deal to get it published, and set it on course to become the novel that epitomises the grand sweep of history in the nineteenth century. This biography of a masterpiece insists that the moral and social message of Hugo's novel, its plea for a new sense of justice, is just as important for our century as it was for its own.
Related / Latest publication(s)
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventures of Les Miserables (Particular Books, Penguin, 2017)
Performance
French singer and songwriter Barbara Carlotti joins novelist Jonathan Coe on stage for an exceptional musical and poetic performance. Between Jonathan Coe’s House of Sleep and Barbara Carlotti’s laboratoire onirique, dreams, memories, and fantasies interweave with reality, composing a free poetic digression between art and science, sound, text and song.
Related / Latest Publication(s)
The House of Sleep (Penguin, 2014)
