Bothayna Al-Essa, born in Kuwait, is a major figure in Arabic-language literature. Her activism and her work – including, in English, All That I Want to Forget (Hoopoe, 2019), Lost in Mecca (DarArab, 2024) and The Book Censor’s Library/The Guardian of Surfaces (Restless Books/Selkies House, 2024, tr. Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain) – make up a fight against censorship and conservatism. Nourished by literary dystopias, her latest novel focuses on the fate of a book censor in a totalitarian society succumbing to the temptations of imagination. It is an ode to the dissident power of words, powerfully echoing the present times.

Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian novelist, essayist, poet, translator and rock singer. His first works, published in the 1990s, contributed to a radical renewal of Ukrainian literature, of which he is now an important voice, translated into several languages and winner of many awards such as the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought in 2014 and the Heine Prize in 2022. His fifth novel, Radio Nuit (Noir sur Blanc, 2025, tr. Iryna Dmytrychyn) follows the fantastic escape of a pianist who uses a radio programme, broadcast all over Eastern Europe, to oppose the rise of totalitarianism.

Constance Bantman is a French essayist and researcher, currently teaching French literature and civilisation at the University of Surrey in England. Specialising in the history of anarchist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries – especially through the printed word – she is the author of several essays, including Un premier exil libertaire (Libertalia, 2024). In 2025, she published Femmes de révolution (Seuil), an essential collection of portraits of activist women who have worked, and united, for a radical transformation of the world.

Amina Damerdji, novelist, poet, doctor of Latin American literature and research fellow at the FNRS (National Fund for Research), grew up in Algiers before leaving for France with her family during the “black decade”, a violent civil war between 1992 and 2002 which pitted the government in power against Islamist militias. Her first novel, Laissez-moi vous rejoindre (Gallimard, 2021) retraces the life of the Cuban revolutionary Haydée Santamaría, while Bientôt les vivants (Gallimard, 2024, winner of the Prix Transfuge for best novel and the Prix de la littérature arabe des lycéens) takes a sharp look at the divisions in Algeria – the roots of chaos and radicalisation.

Alisa Ganieva is a Russian-speaking Dagestani author and literary critic, winner of the 2009 Debut Prize for Salaam Dalgat! (L’Aube, 2013), a short novel describing the wanderings of a young man through the streets of a city in the Russian republic of Dagestan, which is steeped in the rise of extremism. Her latest work, Offended Sensibilities (Deep Vellum, 2022, tr. Carol Apollonio), is a work of political satire about an assassination in a country where repression and corruption reign. A tale of a dark, contemporary Russia which, in silencing its people, only feeds the growing revolution.

Martin Hirsch, currently president of the Institut de l’engagement, is an essayist, novelist and senior French civil servant who served as president of Emmaüs France between 2002 and 2007, and then as director general of Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris from 2013 to 2022. His latest novel, Les solastalgiques (Stock, 2023), gives voice to the phenomenon of eco-anxiety that is crippling the younger generations. In the thick of it, they join forces with those in power – the so-called “global warmers” – and in doing so begin a clandestine revolution against the government’s inaction, questioning the legitimacy of civil disobedience.

Rose Lamy is a French writer, feminist and activist. In 2019, she created the Instagram account Préparez-vous pour la bagarre where she exposes the misogynistic treatment of women and sexual violence in the media. She developed this work in her book Défaire le discours sexiste dans les médias (JC Lattès, 2021). She then published En bons pères de famille (JC Lattès, 2023) as well as Ascendant beauf (Seuil, 2025), an investigation of cultural domination. In 2022 she edited the collective publication Moi aussi (Points), in which nine female writers shared their views on the MeToo revolution at the time of rising conservatism.

Eden Levin is a French writer who studied performing arts at the University of Paris III, and creative writing at the University of Paris VIII. His first novel, Jeudi (Notabilia, 2023), tells the story of a group of young Parisian theatre-makers who, faced with the destruction of their artistic ambitions, decide to stage a revolution instead of going on tour. In a story punctuated by extracts from manifestos, the author depicts their development from innocence of young adulthood, and the brutality of their sudden confrontation with a world governed by capitalism and oppression. Grappling with this absurd system, they decide to blow it up.

Fiston Mwanza Mujila is a novelist, poet, playwright and performer from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is based in Graz, Austria, where he teaches African literature. After Tram 83 (Jacaranda, 2015, tr. Roland Glasser, SGDL Grand Prize for First Novel, longlisted International Booker), The Villain’s Dance (Deep Vellum, 2024, tr. Roland Glasser) daubs an image of the city of Lubumbashi in turmoil, surrounded by countries on the verge of explosion and rife with conspiracy. In this feverish setting of corruption and rebellion, the inhabitants meet every night at the Mambo to party, where, away from the daily chaos, dancing offers an outlet – and a cold shoulder to the dictatorship.

Michel Nieva is a novelist, poet and essayist born in Buenos Aires, now based in New York, where he teaches Latin American literature at NYU. Dengue Boy (Serpent’s Tail 2025, O. Henry Award 2022, tr. Rahul Bery) is a science-fiction novel with cyberpunk influences, set in a dystopian Argentina transformed by ultraliber-alism, the excesses of biotechnology and climate change. A young boy, half-human and half-mosquito, becomes the object of horrendous persecution by his peers. Through their vengeful rebellion, we see the violence of a world devastated by capitalism and the distress of those it destroys.

Daniel de Roulet, a Swiss writer, traveller, novelist and essayist, is the author of more than thirty award-winning books that capture many societal upheavals, as well as, with Un dimanche à la montagne (Buchet-Chastel, 2006), an autobiographical account of the 1975 fire at the chalet of a newspaper tycoon. A novel inspired by real events, Ten Little Anarchists (Autonomedia, 2023, tr. Jocelyne Geneviève Barque and John Galbraith Simmons) retraces the journey of ten women from the Jura who, at the end of the 19th century, revolted against marital constraints and working conditions in the watchmaking industry, going on to found an anarchist community in Patagonia. “No god, no master, no husband”.

Geetanjali Shree is a New Delhi-based Indian novelist writing in Hindi. Translated into many languages, her work challenges the systems of gender domination that permeate Indian society. Her novel Tomb of Sand (Tilted Axis, 2021, tr. Daisy Rockwell, International Booker Prize 2022), an octogenarian’s quest for a new form of freedom and love, challenges patriarchal injunctions. Our City, That Year (Penguin Hamish Hamilton, 2024, tr. Daisy Rockwell) just published in English, is sounding the alarm about the fractures created by the rise of extremist ideologies.

Yuna Visentin is a French writer, researcher and associate professor of literature, graduate of the École normale supérieure. Feminist and a specialist of the decolonial movement, she is the author of Une autre école est possible (Leduc, 2022), a proposal to deconstruct the educational institution in order to build a system free from sexism, racism and classism. In 2024, she published Spiritualités radicales. Rites et traditions pour réparer le monde (Divergences), a reflection on the possible roles of spirituality and religion in the construction of anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and united future.

Dima Wannous is a Syrian writer and translator. She studied French literature in Damascus and Paris. She fled to Beirut and then to London after receiving death threats for criticising the Syrian government in her first collection of short stories, published in 2007 (Tafasil, Dar Al-Adab). Her novel The Frightened Ones (Harvill Secker, 2020, tr. Elisabeth Jaquette) captures the immediate aftermath of the Syrian revolution through two young people’s love story. Separated by the conflict, their correspondences encapsulate all the fear, fragility and damage suffered by the country at large.

The English to French and French to English events will be interpreted by Starr Pirot and Alia Rahal on Friday and Sunday, and by Starr Pirot and Mara Sfreddo on Saturday.

Bothayna Al-Essa © Yousef Alabdullah | Yuri Andrukhovych © Ekko von Schwichow | Constance Bantman © University of Surrey | Amina Damerdji © Francesca Mantovani, Gallimard | Alissa Ganieva © Molly Tallant | Martin Hirsch © Philippe Matsas, Stock | Gaspard Koenig © D.R | Rose Lamy © Marie Rouge | Eden Levin © James Weston | Fiston Mwanza Mujila © Jürgen Fuchs, Kleine Zeitung | Michel Nieva © Coni Rosman | Daniel de Roulet © Philippe Matsas, Phébus | Geetanjali Shree © D.R | Yuna Visentin © D.R | Dima Wannous © Richard Sammour