Workshop
A special writing workshop for kids led by Anne Delorme during which children will discover everything there is to know about the art of haïkus and be taken on a creative journey where they will reflect on nature and create their own little poems. At the end of the workshop, parents and carers are invited to hear the children’s haïkus during a little tea ceremony.
Workshop
Open to everyone interested in discussing philosophical issues in an informal setting, the Institut’s Café Philo meets every Saturday. Following the lead of some of the books showcased in the festival, Christian Michel will be focussing on the nature of man and his (il)legitimate rule over nature and its animal peers, studying different philosophical considerations from Aristotle and Descartes to antispecism, through Darwin and vegetarianism.
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Talk
French writer Jean-Baptiste Del Amo will be coming to the UK for the first time to discuss his exciting novel Animalia, rewarded by the Prix du Livre Inter in 2017 and translated into English by Frank Wynne. A powerful novel about man’s desire to conquer nature and the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, Animalia retraces the history of five generations through the cataclysm of war, economic disasters, and the emergence of a brutal industrialism. He will be in conversation with Coventry-based Sarah Moss, whose powerful Ghost Wall is just out in the UK and The Tidal Zone has been translated into French as Après la fin (Actes Sud). The conversation will be chaired by Cal Revely-Calder (The Telegraph).
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Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Animalia (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019) |
© JFPaga
Talk
Selected for the Prix du roman d’écologie in 2018, French writer Pierre Ducrozet explores the limits of environmental and ecological militantism, and the place of younger generations in these struggles in L’Invention des corps and La Vie qu’on voulait. He will be in conversation with literary critic and former Granta editor John Freeman, for whom he has translated into French the poetry collection Maps - a cartography of meaningful wanderings throughout the world from Algiers to Sarajevo.
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Pierre Ducrozet, L’invention des corps (Actes Sud, 2017) |
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John Freeman, Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2017) |
Talk & Readings
Part 1 - Victor Hugo at Home
From The Hunchback of Notre-Dame to Les Misérables, Victor Hugo’s works are known, read, studied and loved all over the world. Over a century and a half later, his literary influence and his social and political commitments are as relevant as they were then. To mark the re-opening of Hauteville House, the residence of Victor Hugo during his exile in Guernsey, Gérard Audinet, Director of the Paris and Guernsey Maisons de Victor Hugo will be in conversation with Laura, Marie and Jean-Baptiste Hugo as they share knowledge of their ancestor's home and present their recently republished Hauteville House: Victor Hugo décorateur (Paris-Musées, 2016), in partnership with Benjamin Spademan Rare Books.
Part 2 - Victor Hugo's Legacy
Following this, French and British biographers of Victor Hugo Jean-Marc Hovasse and Bradley Stephens will reflect on how one of world literature’s largest bodies of work has come to enjoy global appeal and still influences French and British artists.
Original artwork by Marie and Jean-Baptiste Hugo published in the book will be exhibited from May 17th to 31st at the Benjamin Spademan Rare Books Gallery, 14 Masons’s Yard, SW1Y 6BU
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© Elliot Erwitt/Magnum
Screening & Talk
dir. Imogen Sutton, 1989, 60 mins
Academy Award Nominee Imogen Sutton’s documentary Daughters of de Beauvoir interweaves the life of Simone de Beauvoir with those of the women she influenced – in particular through her seminal book The Second Sex published just 70 years ago. The film includes archive footage of de Beauvoir with Jean-Paul Sartre, and exclusive interviews with writers Kate Millett, Ann Oakley and Marge Piercy who all cite her as a major force in their lives. In partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Followed by a Q&A with director Imogen Sutton, novelist Margaret Drabble and biographer Sarah LeFanu, both interviewed in the original 1989 documentary, and essayist Mithu Sanyal, just published by Verso books. Chaired by Kate Muir, film critic and novelist.
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© Philippe Matsas
Talk
In the first of two events on the legacy of Simone de Beauvoir, writer and performer Adélaïde Bon, accompanied by her translator Ruth Diver, will be discussing her novel The Little Girl on the Ice Floe, tackling themes of sexual violence, child trauma, and personal reconstruction, and French-Iranian screenwriter Négar Djavadi will be talking about Disoriental, a tale of several generations of Iranian and French women set in a Parisian fertility clinic. They will be joined by London Review of Books columnist and Silver Press founder Joanna Biggs to engage in a discussion about the present stakes of feminism and the #metoo movement. Journalist and writer Agnès Poirier, whose latest book Left Bank explores the life and works of Simone de Beauvoir and her influential contemporaries, will chair the event.
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Talk
With twelve published novels, four collections of short stories, and a recently published biography of Daphne du Maurier, Tatiana de Rosnay has been listed as France’s fifth most read French author. She will be discussing her new novel The Rain Watcher, the story of a family split between France and London, with a Parisian backdrop in which the Seine bursts its banks and secrets rise to the surface, with Alicia Drake whose I Love You Too Much is set in the heart of left-bank Paris.
© Étienne Carjat - Domaine public
Talk
French poetry specialists Helen Abbott and Caroline Ardrey will present the Baudelaire Song Project, exploring the legacy of French poet Charles Baudelaire’s seminal text Les Fleurs du Mal and the challenges of adapting his work into performance with musician Frànçois Atlas. Chaired by researcher Nina Rolland, in partnership with the University of Birmingham.
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Helen Abbott, Monograph: Baudelaire in Song 1880–1930 (Oxford University Press, 2017) |
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Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (Alma Classics, 2016) |
© David Levenson/Getty Images (from The Guardian website) & Catherine Tambrun
Talk
Music & Literature editor and former Booker International Prize judge Daniel Medin will be chairing a series of readings and conversations about the dreams and fictions surrounding the social and political debates of today. This salon-style event will see Jonathan Coe talking about his new novel Middle England, set in the aftermath of the British referendum, French writer Olivia Rosenthal and her translator Sophie Lewis reading from To Leave with the Reindeer and questioning our modern ways of life, and Italian writer and FILL festival co-founder Claudia Durastanti discussing the place of European fiction in our reading landscapes.
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