New literary show on France Inter. According to our information, the public radio station has decided to entrust Lilia Hassaine, 33, with a one-hour event that will showcase French-speaking authors. Scheduled for Saturdays, this program, whose title has not yet been decided, will be broadcast on August 31. “Lilia is someone who is cultured, creative, and original. She has a contagious passion for books that she knows how to make accessible to as many people as possible,” says Adèle Van Reeth, the boss of France Inter, about her new recruit.
Co-broadcast on Belgian (RTBF), Swiss (RTS) and Canadian (Radio Canada) public broadcasters, the new format will receive a writer each week for a forty-minute interview aimed at introducing them beyond the book that he comes to defend. Lilia Hassaine will also be keen to highlight the work of booksellers in France and in the show’s partner countries.
Every Saturday, they will provide reading recommendations to listeners. “We want to give them space,” promises the host, who also intends to highlight a paperback book in each issue. “It’s something I care about. These are less expensive books that allow us to talk about a classic,” explains the journalist who has worked on “Quotidien,” Yann Barthès’ show on TMC.
His first radio experience
Author of three novels since 2019, the thirty-year-old hopes to bring her experience of the subject to the new program. “As a writer who has been in their shoes by being interviewed on the radio, I am perhaps aware of the questions that authors are not asked enough and what it is like to write a novel,” explains the woman whose first radio experience as a presenter will be.
This new literary format from France Inter takes up many of the ingredients of “La livre francophone”, a program presented since 2005 by Emmanuel Khérad. This was finally stopped after a final issue in the form of an anthology broadcast on Saturday June 22. On X, Emmanuel Khérad denounced a decision taken “brutally” and without “editorial reason” by the management of the public station. In May, nearly 400 writers and personalities from the literary world also signed a column published in L’Obs to express their “concern” after the announcement of the disappearance of the program.
