Keyword: literature

The shanty town literary gatherings that are transforming Brazilian culture

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Le sarau fora do eixo, un exemple de rencontre littéraire. © (dr) Le sarau fora do eixo, un exemple de rencontre littéraire. © (dr)

Last week Brazil was the 'guest of honour' at the celebrated Paris book fair, the Salon du livre, to which a delegation of 48 leading Brazilian authors was invited. Among them were writers from the favelas, or urban shanty towns, who are behind the 'literature of the periphery', a major cultural trend sweeping the giant South American nation. The emergence of these writers has coincided with a growing taste for prose and poetry among the residents of Brazil's deprived residential districts. This has been fuelled by the phenomenon of grass-roots gatherings known as 'saraus', which are attracting more and more people to listen to and take part in literary readings. Lamia Oualalou reports from Rio de Janeiro on this dynamic movement in Brazilian popular culture, one that might just have some lessons for France's own deprived and troubled suburbs.

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Spanish civil war novel wins France’s top literary award

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Lydie Salvaire's novel Pas pleurer (Don’t Cry) picked up the Prix Goncourt, while David Foenkinos’s Charlotte won Renaudot prize.

The fear of 'forgetting' that drives French Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano

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Patrick Modiano, le 9 octobre à Paris. © Reuters Patrick Modiano, le 9 octobre à Paris. © Reuters

On Thursday French author Patrick Modiano was named as the 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. In its citation the Swedish Academy said the prize had been awarded to honour “the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation”. It is, above all, recognition of 40 years of an obsessive quest, motivated by the fear of forgetting. Here Mediapart journalist Ellen Salvi, who spent five years at the Sorbonne in Paris studying Modiano's work and who has met the media-shy writer in person, shares her insight into the past influences and “previous lives” that have helped shape his writing.

French writer Patrick Modiano wins the Nobel prize for literature

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The author, the 11th French writer to win prize, is best-known for his novel 'Missing Person' about a detective who loses his memory.

Algerian writer wins world French literature prize

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Kamel Daoud's novel 'Mersault the counter-enquiry' was inspired by the classic work L'Étranger by French writer Albert Camus.

French writer blasted for 'eulogy' to Norwegian mass killer Breivik

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An essay by author Richard Millet entitled "Literary Eulogy for Anders Breivik" has caused a row within France's literary community.