The Brive Book Fair is an opportunity to meet authors from different literary landscapes. We asked three questions to Gaël Faye, Amélie Nothomb and Maylis de Kerangal on writing, the place of women in literature in France and the news that marked them this year.
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The Brive Book Fair has been in full swing since this Friday and until this Sunday evening, November 10. Every year, up to 80,000 visitors stroll through the aisles of the Halle Georges Brassens and the Espace des 3 Provinces. The latter welcomes comics and children’s literature.
More than 400 authors come to sign their works. Among them, Amélie Nothomb – she has just published “The Impossible Return” – Gaël Faye, Renaudot Prize 2024 with her second work “Jacaranda” and Maylis de Kerangal with “Jour de Ressac”.
What news from the year 2024 could inspire a text?
Gail Faye : “Youth speaks to me a lot. What do we say to youth in this world we live in? The rise of extremes… How to find the words to console and to make us want to remain dignified , stand up and resist? Would these be texts that would carry, within them, these feelings.”
Maylis of Kerangal: “It’s something quite dramatic: the enormous mudslide which took place in Spain. Both on the level of the imagination as a kind of cataclysm which questions the state of the world. I was extremely impressed by the images I saw last week. It would be a realistic text.
Amélie Nothomb: “There’s so much going on right now… Maybe I’m getting pregnant without even realizing it? There are a lot of very beautiful things and a lot of very worrying things like Trump’s re-election Who knows what will come of all this.”
Are the major literary prizes reserved for men?
Amélie Nothomb: “It’s debatable. There have been some very good prizes with Julia Deck and the Medici Prize. It’s changing very slowly, but it’s still changing. We’re not yet at the level we should be reaching, but in my opinion In 20 years, we’ll be there.”
Maylis of Kerangal: “Do all books have the same chances as the books of men? There is still something strange happening. These worlds are long and slow to evolve surely.”
Gail Faye: “Yes, at all levels of society, we need this parity, equality and indeed, I believe that yes, it is still lacking. I would simply like to say that concerning Burundi and Rwanda, these are not stories that we often hear and when I obtained the Renaudot prize, the first person I thought of was Scholastique Mukasonga (for “Our -Lady of the Nile”, Editor’s note), Renaudot 2012, first Rwandan woman to have won the prize. Of course, there is still work to be done, but we must hear the voices that have already been expressed and who have also won awards.”
How do you become a writer?
Amélie Nothomb: “My answer will disappoint you, but it’s the one that comes to mind. You really have to love people deeply, I’ve never found any other way to do it.”
Gail Faye : “To write you must already find your own language. Everyone carries within them an intimate language and then not be too afraid of silence, of questioning, of introspection. Of continuing to doubt. It’s only doubt , questioning, curiosity.”
Maylis of Kerangal: “You have to read. I think it’s very important to read. We write because we read. Reading and writing begin to be two communicating vessels.”
