'For a long time, night after night, I welcomed it. It lived with me, loved me, enthralled me; I curled up inside my dream.'
This Tilting World, by Colette Fellous
`Photograph by Dominic Lee, 2019
Book launch
Wednesday 18th September, 6.30pm
Daunt Books Hampstead London
51 South End Road, London NW3 2QB
Tickets (£5) can be purchased here.
Sidi Bou Saïd, Tunisia, June 2015: facing the sea at night, in the aftermath of a friend’s death and of the terrorist massacre on the beach of Sousse, a woman attempts to take stock.
‘Colette Fellous’s beautiful book, humming and dancing with sensual intelligence, newly vivid in Sophie Lewis’s deft, delicate, agile version, takes change and translation as its very themes. It asks us to imagine leaving home, searching for a new home.’ – Michèle Roberts (from her preface to the book)
‘At times reminiscent of Elias Canetti’s Voices of Marrakesh, this gentle meditation on loss, fragmentation and the violence of intolerance, can be as unsettling as it is moving.’ – Selma Dabbagh, author of Out of It
Colette Fellous is a French-Tunisian writer of Italian and Jewish heritage, and the author of more than twenty novels, including Aujourd’hui (2005), for which she received the Prix Marguerite Duras, and La préparation de la vie (2014), in which she pays homage to her mentor Roland Barthes. An interviewer and a radio producer at France Culture for 30 years, she is also a photographer, and lives between France and Tunisia.
We are delighted to announce that Colette Fellous will be in London to celebrate the publication of her first book to be translated into English. Michèle Roberts will chair a conversation with the author and her translator Sophie Lewis, followed by readings in French and in English, a short Q&A with the audience, and a glass of wine.
You can pre-order This Tilting World here.
This book is supported by the Institut français Paris as part as their programme of aid to publication and by the Institut français Royaume-Uni, as part of the Burgess programme
Les Fugitives authors at Edinburgh Book Festival
For those of you in Edinburgh next week, there'll be a chance to hear Mireille Gansel, author of Translation as Transhumance, on Thursday 15th August, at 10.30am, in discussion with writer Marek Kohn. More details and tickets here.
On Tuesday 13th, at 5.45pm Ros Schwartz (whose nimble translation of Selfies by Sylvie Weil we published in June) will be sparring with Vineet Lal in a translation duel, hosted by Daniel Hahn. More details and tickets here.