Category: Spotlight on Publishing

the inside take

Spotlight | François-Henri Désérable, A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran | Editions Gallimard

François-Henri Désérable travelled from Tehran to the border with Balochistan at the end of 2022, at the height of Iranian Government repression quashing civil unrest and nationwide protests against the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.  At the end of his forty-day journey he was arrested and interrogated by the Revolutionary Guards, who believed his story: instead of being imprisoned he was ordered to immediately leave the country. He returned to Europe with this unique traveller’s tale, recounting his adventures and encounters with a largely pro-Western people brutally subjugated by an anti-Western religious theocracy, in L’usure d’un monde: Une traversée de l’Iran / A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran.

Désérable’s itinerary starts from a boarding house in Tehran, going on to Qom, Kashan, Ispahan, Shiraz, Persepolis, Yazd, Kerman, Bam, Lut desert, Keshit, Bam, Zahedan, then back to Tehran; and finally Tabriz and Saqqez.

Continue reading Spotlight | François-Henri Désérable, A Ravaged World: Travels Across Iran | Editions Gallimard

Spotlight | Jean Michelin, CEUX QUI RESTENT – THOSE WHO STAY | Éditions Heloïse d’Ormesson

Jean Michelin’s Those Who Stay is a powerful and deeply human novel about the impact of war on soldiers fighting in distant countries, and what these men are like when they return. Wearing a mask of silence to avoid the expression of strong feelings for fear of losing control comes at a high cost. The story centres around a private investigation done by four soldiers when one of their unit is reported missing. Their adherence to the military doctrine based on mutual trust between leaders and those they lead is unshakeable, even when back home on civvy street. Those Who Stay also shows the detrimental effect of their arrivals and departures on the families, girlfriends and wives who stay behind; and the children growing up alone with their mother.

Continue reading Spotlight | Jean Michelin, CEUX QUI RESTENT – THOSE WHO STAY | Éditions Heloïse d’Ormesson

Spotlight | Bruno Le Maire, FUGUE AMÉRICAINE – AMERICAN FUGUE | Gallimard, April 2023

American Fugue is at once a fictionalized biography of one of the most famous musicians of his time, and his contemporaries; a historical novel; a disillusioned meditation on the decadence of the West; a series of philosophical reflections on love, family and intimacy (including some racy sex scenes); a powerful evocation of the ravages of Nazism, Stalinism and Capitalism; a comedy of manners . . . It’s all in there: ambition and power, money and influence, success and failure, lost illusions and existential depression, sex and betrayal.

Continue reading Spotlight | Bruno Le Maire, FUGUE AMÉRICAINE – AMERICAN FUGUE | Gallimard, April 2023

Media Release | Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience (ed.) Onyekachi Wambu | Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 22 June, 2023

In this authoritative anthology, Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience, journalist and writer, Onyekachi Wambu, collates some of the most significant writing to mark seventy-five years since the arrival of Empire Windrush at a critical juncture in modern British history, in June 1948. 

The ship’s name is apt for undertaking the dual tasks of this broad-based and authoritative anthology: first, reflecting on the experience of seventy five years of ‘Windrush’ post-Brexit and the Second Elizabethan Age. Second, meditating on over a millennia of earlier ship arrivals and departures, carrying other human cargo, alongside the troubled intricate business of Empire. Continue reading Media Release | Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience (ed.) Onyekachi Wambu | Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 22 June, 2023

Spotlight | Highlights, Beyond Words Festival, 2023 | Institut Français du Royaume Uni

This year’s Beyond Words Festival featured a great line-up from across the Channel. Throughout the week, the  Institut Français du Royaume Uni in South Kensington, London, was bustling with people eager to see their favourite French authors in conversation with their British counterparts discussing not only their latest books, but many things words and ideas from France, past and present.

The first event I attended was A Gallic Evening with Muriel Barbery, Antoine Laurain and Jean-Baptiste Andrea, chaired by Viv Groskop. Gallic Books publish “the very best of what the French are actually reading.”  Over the past decade, they have brought over one hundred authors to the British reading public.

Continue reading Spotlight | Highlights, Beyond Words Festival, 2023 | Institut Français du Royaume Uni

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