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Rethinking France
06 July 2010
Rethinking France edited by Pierre Nora,the fourth and final volume in Pierre Nora’s monumental series documenting the history and culture of France has just been released in English by the University of Chicago Press.
Distinguished contributors look at the medieval Grands chroniques de France and the monasteries and chancelleries that produced them, the establishment of Versailles as a historical museum, and Pierre Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire, an important touchstone of cultural memory. Other essays range in topic from the creation of the National Archives, a curiously organized catacomb of manuscripts, to Annales, a publication begun in 1929 that profoundly revitalized the study of history in France.
Taken together these richly detailed essays fully explore the multifaceted ways France has institutionalized its history and are, along with the rest of Les Lieux de mémoire, a crucial part of that process.
Pierre Nora is editorial director at Éditions Gallimard. Since 1977, he has been directeur d’Études at the École des hautes Études en science sociales. He has directed the editorial work on Les Lieux de mÉmoire since 1984. David P. Jordan is the LAS Distinguished Professor of French History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of Transforming Paris and The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre.
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New Release:
30 August 2009
Brodeck by Philippe Claudel reviewed and excerpted in The New York Times:
“I write novels like a filmmaker, but I write films like a novelist,” Philippe Claudel said when “I’ve Loved You So Long,” his first work as director, appeared last year. The comment couldn’t have meant much to American audiences. To us, that powerful and eloquent movie, with Kristin Scott Thomas as a doctor just released from prison, seemed to come out of nowhere. Although Claudel had long been respected as a novelist in France, only two of his previous books, “By a Slow River” and “Grey Souls,” had been translated into English. Now his latest novel, “Brodeck,” arrives like a fresh, why-haven’t-we-known-him discovery, revealing him to be as dazzling on the page as he is on the screen.
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The Elegance of Muriel Barbery
22 May 2009
Please check Muriel Barbery's profile in Publishers Weekly :
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6660127.html
Muriel Barbery is lovely, not unlike the exquisite prose of her runaway hit novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Why a hedgehog? She shakes her head.
“The whole time [the novel] was just called 'Renee' [the name of the narrator, the concierge in a ritzy Parisian apartment building], but we wanted something joyful, mysterious. My husband, Stephane, suggested the title.” (In hindsight, Renee does have hedgehog qualities) Muriel's husband, whom she met when she was 23, has been an enormous influence on her writing. He encouraged her to publish—she credits him with being an excellent first reader; she calls the milieu of the hedgehog “his universe.” And he made her fall in love with Japan, where they now live—in the city of Kyoto, which she says is like “living in a dream.”
Before Hedgehog, published in the U.S. in 2008 [..] -it has 170,000 copies in print in the U.S., where it sits on the New York Times bestseller list- there was Une Gourmandise, Barbery's first novel, published in France in 2000. Europa Editions, which bought Hedgehog before any of the hoopla, is publishing this first novel in September, with the English title Gourmet Rhapsody.
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Muriel Barbery on Tour April 2009
05 April 2009
Author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog(Europa Editions,September 2008) was in Los Angeles and New York IN April to meet her American readers.
The Hedgehog was named April book of the month by NPR's The Diane Rehm show. Together with Sarah Pickup-Diligenti, Michael Dirda, and Leslie Maitland, Diane discussed the book on her Reader's Review morning program. The book has spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
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French Voices / Call for submission
02 March 2009
French Voices, a translation grant program administered by the French Embassy and the PEN American Center, is now accepting applications for 2009. You may download the application form from the Website: http://www.frenchbooknews.com/grantsamericanpublishers.php.
Please note that the deadline for receipt of your application is Tuesday, March 31, 2009.
For more information, on French Voices or other available translation programs, please visit: www.frenchbooknews.com.
Six of the titles, which were awarded a French Voices grant in 2006-2008, are looking for an American publisher:
-Frédéric Pajak, Le chagrin d’amour, PUF, 2000
-Marie Darrieussecq, Le bébé, P.O.L., 2002
-Yasmina Khadra, Cousine K, Julliard, 2003
-René Belletto, Coda, P.O.L., 2005
-Luc Lang, Cruels 13, Stock, 2007
-Jean Rolin, L'Explosion de la durite, P.O.L., 2007
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Never-before seen photographs of the moon
Lune
Moon
29 December 2008
After Space: Exploring the Moon, the Planets, and Beyond (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2006) and Visions of Mars (HNA Books, 2005), which sold more than 50,000 copies in the United States, de Goursac is releasing for the first time restored photos of the Apollo missions in MOON. With these never-before-seen original NASA photographs and stunning panoramic pictures, he once again invites his readers to travel alongside the astronauts on the Moon and discover its mysterious landscapes.
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