French Literature In the Making: Alain Mabanckou in conversation with Olivier Barrot

Florence Gould Event

Alain Mabanckou, crowned the “Prince of the absurd” and the “African Samuel Beckett” by critics, is a novelist, journalist, and currently a professor of literature at UCLA. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his works include nine novels, among them African Psycho and Blue White Red, along with six volumes of poetry and an essay on James Baldwin. He has received numerous awards, such as the Francophonie Five Continents Prize for his novel Broken Glass and the Prix Renaudot for Memoirs of a Porcupine, and he was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2010.

Olivier Barrot is a journalist, author, and television personality who plays a prominent role in French cultural life. He has hosted the daily literary program “Un livre un jour” on France 3 and TV 5 television since 1991. He also directs a series of public discussions with actors of the Comédie Française on their profession and runs the monthly show “Grandes Scènes” at Théâtre de Poche, Paris. His most recent books include L’Ami posthume, Le Fils perdu, La Revue Blanche, and Mitteleuropa. He is in his tenth year of hosting “French Literature in the Making” at NYU, which inspired his Paris series with playwrights, “Mots en scène.”

In French.

Books available for sale.

Presented with the additional support of Sofitel and La Compagnie.