Bibliotopia 2023
Week-end of world literature

Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages, has won many prizes including the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, and was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, National Book Critics Circle Prize, and LA Times Prize. Her new title, Matrix (Heinemann, 2021), is a novel in which medieval poet Marie de France is reimagined as a feminist symbol of emancipation and icon of sisterhood.

Alexis Jenni, professor of natural sciences, won the Prix Goncourt with his first novel, The French Art of War (tr. Frank Wynn, Atlantic, 2017). Since then, his works have been a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, including, most recently, J’aurais pu devenir millionnaire… (2020) and Le passeport de Monsieur Nansen (2022). His essays, Parmi les arbres (Actes Sud, 2021) and Cette planète n’est pas très sûre (Nature et Savoir, 2022), celebrate the cohabitation of species as a common good.

Olivier Remaud is a French philosopher and essayist, and director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He has published numerous works, including Penser comme un iceberg (Actes Sud, 2020) and Quand les montagnes dansent: récits de la Terre intime (Actes Sud, 2023). His latest title explores many aspects of the mountains and offers a meditation on how ecosystems exist and how we can live in the world.

Olesya Khromeychuk is a Ukrainian-born professor and writer based in London. She has taught Central and Eastern European history at a number of universities and is currently director of the Ukrainian Institute in London. She also works with magazines such as the New York Review of Books and Der Spiegel. Her book The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (Monoray, 2022) looks at the impact of grief in a time of political violence, told from the perspective of a sister, historian, and citizen.

Florence Aubenas is a French reporter and writer. Her reportages about Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq (where she was captured and kept hostage for five months in 2005), and the Outreau trial are the best of their kind. Her books include The Night Cleaner (tr. Andrew Brown, Polity, 2011), L’inconnu de la poste (L’Olivier, 2021), and Ici et ailleurs (L’Olivier, 2023). Insightful and true to life, her writing captures the turmoil of the world and the people affected by it.

Maria Stepanova, a Russian journalist, poet and essayist, founder of the cultural magazine Colta.ru, has won the Bolshaya Kniga Prize. Her writing has been translated into nearly thirty languages. In Memory of Memory (tr. Sasha Dugdale, Fitzcarraldo, 2021, International Booker Prize shortlist) interrogates the relationship between memory and personal, familial and political history. Faced with the fragments of memory, we question its value.

Monika Sznajderman, an anthropologist, runs the Polish publishing house Czarne, co-founded with her husband, the writer Andrzej Stasiuk. She is also the author of several books, including Faux poivre (Noir sur Blanc, tr. into French Caroline Raszka-Dewez), a personal and collective investigation that lifts the veil of silence covering her childhood against the background of complex Polish history.

Philippe Sands is a Franco-British writer, an international lawyer specializing in human rights, and a professor of law at University College London. He regularly appears before the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court. He is the author of East West Street (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017, European Book Prize, Baillie Gifford Prize), and The Ratline (2019). The Last Colony (2022) investigates the Chagos Archipelago and the continuing scourge of colonialism.

Eduardo Berti is an Argentine translator, journalist, novelist, French and Spanish short story writer and Oulipo member. His works include Aqua (tr. Alexander Cameron, Pushkin, 2003), La vie impossible (Actes Sud, 2003, Prix Libralire), Le pays imaginé (2013, Prix Las Américas), An Ideal Presence (tr. David Levin Becker, Fern Books, 2021). Un père étranger and Un fils étranger (La Contre Allée, tr. into French by Jean-Marie Saint-Lu, 2021) explore family secrets against the backdrop of exile.

Oriane Jeancourt Galignani, writer, literary critic, and editor-in-chief of the French cultural magazine Transfuge, has published several novels with Grasset, including Hadamar (2017, Prix de La Closerie des Lilas) and La femme-écrevisse (2020). Quand l’arbre tombe (2022, Prix Terre de France) explores a delicate relationship between father and daughter in the midst of the uncertainties of old age and buried family tragedies.

Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian- American writer who teaches creative writing at Queens College and Princeton University. Her first novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (Jonathan Cape, 2020), was one of the Guardian’s ten best books by African authors. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020, The Shadow King (Canongate, 2020) casts light on the women warriors written out of African history.

Claudie Hunzinger is a French artist and writer who has lived on a farm in the Vosges since 1965. Her writing is enriched by the language of nature. She has published numerous novels, including Bambois, la vie verte (Stock, 1973), L’incandescente (2016) and Les grands cerfs (2019, Prix Décembre) with Grasset. Un chien à ma table (2022, Prix Femina, finaliste Prix Renaudot) destabilises established order, confronting the vulnerabilities and cruelty of passing time.

Hanna Bervoets is a Dutch writer, essayist and screenwriter. Her prolific body of work has earned her the Frans Kellendonk Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Netherlands. Published in English by Picador, We Had to Remove this Post (2022, translated by Emma Rault) and Ivanow (to be published later in 2023) measure the fluctuations of human behaviour against the yardstick of scientific change and new technologies.

Lucie Rico is a French novelist, screenwriter and director, and an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Clermont Auvergne. Her first book, a dark fable, Fowl Eulogies (translated by Daria Chernysheva, World Editions, 2023), won the Ecology Prize. GPS, which received a special mention in the Wepler Prize, explores the world without restrictions and, under the guise of an investigation into a shocking disappearance, questions the porosity between the real and the virtual.

Khaled Khalifa, born near Aleppo, is a renowned Syrian novelist and poet, as well as a screenwriter. He lives in Damascus. His books, translated into English by Leri Price and into many other languages include: In Praise of Hatred (Doubleday, 2012, International Prize for Arabic Fiction shortlist) and No Knives in the Kitchens of this City (Hoopoe, 2016, Naguib Mahfouz Medal). Death is Hard Work (Faber, 2019) recounts the perilous journey of three siblings in war-torn Syria to bury their father in his native village.

The English to French and French to English events will be interpreted by Starr Pirot, Alia Rahal and Marina Korac Rougemont.

The Arabic to French and French to Arabic event will be interpreted by Rawdha Cammoun-Claveria and Jihane Sfeir.

Lauren Groff © Eli Sinkus | Alexis Jenni © D.R | Olivier Remaud © D.R | Olesya Khromeychuk © D.R | Florence Aubenas © Patrice Normand | Maria Stepanova © Andrey Natotsinsky | Monika Sznajderman © Albert Zawada | Philippe Sands © Samuel Kirszenbaum | Eduardo Berti © Dorothée Billard | Oriane Jeancourt Galignani © Jean-François Paga | Maaza Mengiste © Nina Subin | Claudie Hunzinger © Marc Guenard | Hanna Bervoets © Klaas Hendrik Slump | Lucie Rico © Hélène Bamberger, P.O.L | Khaled Khalifa © Yamam Alshaar