Katja Petrovic, 1976 in Hamburg geboren, ist freie Radiojournalistin in Paris. Katja Petrovic, born 1976 in Hamburg, free lancing radio journalist in Paris.
Katja Petrovic, 1976 in Hamburg geboren, ist freie Radiojournalistin in Paris.
Katja Petrovic, born 1976 in Hamburg, free lancing radio journalist in Paris.
“You lose what is not communicated; it’s as simple as that”, according to Alice Zeniter’s fifth novel L’art de perdre – The Art of Losing. However, the 31-year-old writer didn’t wish to make it quite so simple. She traced her Algerian roots and has written a thrilling family saga about the Algerian war and its consequences.
David Lopez’s suburban novel FIEF incorporates everything that this material calls for: boxers, rappers, plenty of drugs and a little Voltaire. This turns into a sensitive mixture that has hit a nerve in France: the novel received the Prix du livre Inter audience award.
In January, when Joachim Schnerf published his novel “Cette nuit” – about Salomon, a Holocaust survivor, who must celebrate Jewish Passover for the first time without his late wife, Sarah – nobody could guess that a Jewish family in Paris would encounter a similar fate.
What reality lies behind the virtual medium of the Internet, and what would our world be without the ‘www’? Swiss writer Aude Seigne (32) tackles these questions in her novel Une toile large comme le monde
Leïla Slimani, Nathacha Appanah, Atiq Rahimi … they have all come from the Francophone world and are leading writers in France. In their native countries, however, they are not yet as well known, since often their work has not even been published here. The difficult relationship between France and its former colonies is also reflected in the publishing sector.
For a long time, Maryam Madjidi, the Franco-Iranian writer, didn’t know how she should narrate her “Persian stories”. Last autumn, the 37-year-old author turned them into a novel. Marx et la poupée about her childhood in Iran, her exile in Paris and life between two cultures received the accolade of the Prix Goncourt for her debut novel.
France’s election campaign was in full swing. The Conservatives and French far-right wing parties have done their best to bolster their ideas about national identity...
It could be his films, books or articles – for Karim Miské, everything revolves around one main question: belonging. From a young age, the son...
France is this year’s Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Buchmesse. However, the recognition is not only for France, but also the French language including Francophone writers and publishers...
France is in crisis – a social, economic and political crisis. The terror attacks have particularly deprived the French of some of their renowned joie de vivre...
She won the accolade of the Prix Goncourt in 2016: Leïla Slimani, aged 35, born and raised in Rabat, based since her eighteenth year in Paris where she works as a journalist and writer. She is the 12th woman to be awarded this prize in its 113-year history...
France is the 2017 Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Writers from the Francophone world are invited for the occasion, in particular those from the former colonies...
The subject of national identity is a slow-burner in France. It came to light again during the Republicans’ primaries when François Fillon was chosen as the right-wing candidate for the 2017...
This year a breath of fresh air circulated around the award of literature prizes in France. The good news: the accolades went to a high number of young female writers. The bad news: small publishers again missed out on the winners...
Laurent Mauvignier is among France’s leading contemporary writers. Readers who take up one of his novels immediately notice that actually there is a quite exceptional narrator at work here. He gets under your skin no matter whether the 49-year-old...
All those who may now feel caught in a dreadful predicament – on the one hand, wanting to embrace the necessity of a united Europe, while on the other no longer finding any arguments to defend the EU in its current form...
In 2012, Robert Menasse’s essay Der Europäische Landbote. Die Wut der Bürger und der Friede Europas was published (trans. Craig Decker as “Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits”). Menasse provided a personal appraisal of the European Union, its real functions as well as...
The Prix du livre Inter or Inter Book Prize is the last of the season’s leading literary prizes in France...
At the end of June the Centre national du livre in Paris published a study of children and young people’s reading behaviour. The good news is that they read...
Idle talk about the French “exception culturelle” is really getting on some people’s nerves. For instance, back in 2013 France was alone in insisting that films and audio-visual materials regulated by the free trade agreement between the US and the EU ought not to get the same treatment as other merchandise.
What does Europe mean today? In light of the refugee crisis and financial collapse and the impending risk of failure of the European political project, booksellers from 19 European countries attempted to find answers to this question.
Does European literature exist? If so, in what way is it influenced by writers whose lives and works are rooted in the diverse cultures, languages and countries? Nicole Bary, the French publisher and translator, has focused on these issues for over three decades.
Laurent Binet is among the most successful French writers of his generation. His latest novel earned instant acclaim with two important prizes in 2015. In 2010 he was awarded the accolade of the Goncourt Prize for his first novel published in multilingual translation. However, reception varies from one country to the next.
Three days after the terror attacks, on Monday, despite the continuing state of emergency, the French people returned to everyday life. Schools, shops, cinemas and concert halls are now open again. On Monday evening at the famous cabaret theatre, “Les Folies Bergères” for the first time writers have voiced their opinions about the attacks. In front of an audience of more than 1,000 the French philosopher Frédéric Lenoir, the Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra and one of the most Francophile American writers, Douglas Kennedy, attempted to find words for the horrific events.
One and a half years before the French presidential elections the political climate in France is tense. Trust in François Hollande has long since ebbed away and a second term in office looks more than unlikely for him. So who will be his successor?
It’s literary awards time – this week is France’s most important season for literary accolades. The Prix Goncourt goes to Mathias Enard for his novel Boussole and not to Algerian writer, Boualem Sansal, whose name even vanished from the shortlist much to the surprise of many critics.
It’s well known that literature and television are difficult to reconcile. When you’re reading you embark on a quiet and leisurely journey to an imaginary realm, but the TV viewer expects entertainment with appealing images, eloquent writers and brief commentaries. It’s open season for all clichés. For example, in the German literary show Druckfrisch the young, attractive Austrian writer Vea Kaiser – she landed a bestseller with her novel “Blasmusikpop” (“Wind Music Pop”) set in a mountain village in her home region – is seen with the backdrop of an Alpine plateau. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXRfhfr7Mw)
0 Einträge Eintrag
