Agenda
Événements & colloques
Authors on tour

Authors on tour

Publié le par Florian Pennanech (Source : Isabelle Grell)

Philippe Forest

Biography

Born in Paris in 1962, Philippe Forest is the author of numerous essays on art and literature, and of four novels published by Éditions Gallimard: L'Enfant éternel (The Eternal Child, winner of the Prix Femina for a first novel in 1997), Toute la nuit (All Night Long, 1999), Sarinagara (winner of the Prix Décembre in 2004) and Le Nouvel amour (The New Love). He is currently a professor of literature at the University of Nantes, specializing in the avant-garde.

Bibliography

- Histoire de Tel Quel, Seuil, 1995

- L'Enfant éternel, Collection L'Infini, Gallimard, 1997

- Toute la nuit, Collection blanche, Gallimard, 1999

- Raymond Hains uns romans, Collection Art et Artistes, Gallimard, 2004

- Sarinagara, Collection blanche, Gallimard, 2004, translated into English: Sarinagara, Mercury House, October 2009

- La beauté du contresens et autres essais sur la littérature japonaise, Allaphbed I, Cécile Defaut, 2005

- Le Nouvel Amour, Collection blanche, Gallimard, 2007

- Tous les enfants sauf un, Collection blanche, Gallimard, 2007

- Le Roman, le réel et autres essais, Cécile Defaut, 2007

- Araki enfin, L'homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, Collection Art et Artistes, Gallimard, 2008

About the novel Sarinagara (Release Date: July 2009, Mercury House) “In Japanese, ‘Sarinagara' means ‘and yet.' This word is the last word of one of the most famous poems of Japanese literature. When he writes it, Kobayashi Issa has just lost his only child: yes, all is emptiness. But Issa mysteriously adds this last word to his poem, leaving its meaning in suspense. This enigma is the theme of a narrative that brings together the stories of three Japanese artists across the centuries: Issa, the last great Haiku master of the 18th century, Natsume Soseki, inventor of the Japanese modern novel at the end of the 19th century, and Yamahata Yosuke, who was the first photographer to take pictures of the victims and ruins of Nagasaki in August 1945. These three ‘dreamed lives' make the substance of a narrative that takes the reader from Paris to Kyoto and from Tokyo to Kobe, and asks the question of how anyone can hope to survive the most tragic experience.

‘Surviving is both the test and the enigma.' Following the death of his young daughter, the narrator moves to Japan with the project of writing an essay on Japanese literature. There, on the other side of the earth, he experiences a series of incidents that connect him to a recurrent childhood dream and allow him to explore the depth of his own grief through the stories of others. Sarinagara is a poignant meditation on the nature of grief, art, and memory.”

Yann Nicol in The Brooklyn Rail

CONFERENCES OFFERED IN ENGLISH OR IN FRENCH

Forest can read excerpts from his writings and present his work, especially his new novel translated into English: Sarinagara. He's also available for other types of events such as lectures, talks, discussions... He can lecture on topics related to his novels or to his recent essays (the series published by the editions Cécile Defaut under the title taken from Joyce "Allaphbed" and including two books on Japanese literature, one volume on the art of the novel and another on French literary avantgarde). He can also give more formal or academic lectures, presenting in English the content of some of the articles compiled in the volumes of his “Allaphbed”. Titles could include: "A Romance of the Real" (after "Le Roman, le Réel"), "How to write a Japanese novel in French" (after "La Beauté du contresens" and "Haikus, etc."), "Why I am not a writer of 'autofiction” (after "Dix propositions pour en finir avec l'autofiction"), "What's left of the French literary avant-garde?" (after "De Tel Quel à L'Infini").

DATES FROM FEBRUARY 20 TO MARCH 1, 2010

Contact: Mathilde Billaud, tél: 212 439 1447, mbillaud@frenchbooknews.com; bookoffice@frenchculture.org