the essential
Inaugurated this Tuesday evening, November 19, 2024 in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), the 34th Letters of Autumn festival takes place at the Olympe-de-Gouges theater until December 1. Fifteen days which will be dedicated to literature, music and sharing, with two guests of honor: Jakuta Alikavazovic and Sylvain Prudhomme.
Proust’s Madeleine of November in the city of Ingres, Lettres d’Automne opens its 34th volume this Tuesday, November 19, 2024 in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne).
The opening ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a welcome for all the public on the square in front of the Olympe-de-Gouges theater, redecorated in the colors of the festival by the Espace Bourdelle Sculpture and the Compagnie Le Théâtrophone, students and teachers of the Pôle artistic lessons from Grand Montauban will offer musical interludes. This will also be an opportunity to open the pop-up bookstore which will be run by the booksellers of La Femme Renard and Bateau Livre throughout the fortnight. They will present the books of the invited authors, a selection around the themes of the program, and we will meet there for the signings at the end of the meetings and readings.
From 7 p.m., the highlights of the program will be revealed. The various partners will speak in the presence of guests of honor Jakuta Alikavazovic and Sylvain Prudhomme. This opening ceremony will conclude with a cocktail offered by the City of Montauban.
Then at 8:30 p.m., first musical reading: “Our impulses, our quests”. Jakuta Alikavazovic and Sylvain Prudhomme will offer a reading in the form of a journey through some of their books. Carried by the sound of Fayçal Salhi’s oud which brilliantly combines oriental tradition and jazz, their voices will cross and reveal the multiple tones of their writings. All audiences. Free.
Also read:
INTERVIEW. Agnès Gros, director of Confluences: “The Lettres d’Automne festival wants to shine throughout the territory”
The guests of honor
Jakuta Alikavazovic born in Paris to a Montenegrin father and a Bosnian mother, published a collection of short stories in 2006: “Histoires contre nature”, then the following year “Volatile bodies”, crowned by the Goncourt prize for the first novel. Several works followed, including “Le Londres Luxor”, “The Blonde and the Bunker” then “The Advance of the Night”. A love cross prey to the traumas of the war in Bosnia, the latter was elected “French revelation of the year” by Lire magazine.
In 2021, she won the Prix Médicis essay for the story “Comme un ciel en nous” published in the collection “Ma nuit au musée” by Stock editions. An English graduate, Jakuta Alikavazovic also devotes herself to the translation of essays and novels (including Milkman by Anna Burns and Beloved by Toni Morrison). She has been a columnist for the newspaper Libération since 2019. In 2024, she will hold the writer-in-residence chair at Sciences Po.
Sylvain Prudhomme spent his childhood abroad (Cameroon, Burundi, Niger, Mauritius) before coming to study literature in Paris. From 2009 to 2012, he led the Franco-Senegalese Alliance of Ziguinchor, in Casamance. He was one of the founding members of the magazine Geste and collaborated with the newspaper Le Tigre, for which he notably wrote two serials: “Africaine Queen” (2010), about the hair salons of the Château d’Eau district, in Paris, and “Life in the Trees” (2011), about the inhabitants of the Ariège forests. He translated the essay “Decolonizing the Mind” by the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o (La Fabrique, 2011).
Author of novels, reports and chronicles, he has published around ten books acclaimed by critics and translated abroad, including “Là, had said Bahi” (L’Arbalète, Louis-Guilloux Prize 2012), “Les Grands » (French revelation 2014 from Lire magazine), “Par les routes” (L’Arbalète, Fémina prize 2019), “Les Orages” (L’Arbalète 2021) and “L’enfant dans le taxi” (Minuit, 2023).
