french literature

Kicking off 2024 we welcome Tara Cheesman to the podcast with her recommendation, Being Here Is Everything: The Life and Times of Paula Modersohn-Becker by Marie Darriussecq, translated by Penny Hueston. Tara is a freelance critic, former judge of the Best Translated Book Award, and she brings us our first work of nonfiction. We have an absolutely fascinating conversation on art, motherhood, representations of women, and a lot more. And recommend a small syllabus of titles to dig into.

Titles/authors mentioned:

Imperium by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles

Nathalie Léger: Suite for Barbara Loden, Exposition, The White Dress

Éric Plamondon: Apple S and Mayonnaise

Jean Echenoz’s biographical novels: Running, Lightning, Ravel

Sharks, Death, Surfers by Melissa McCarthy

Kate Zambreno: Book of Mutter and To Write As If Already Dead

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

Jazmina Barrera: On Lighthouses and Linea Nigra

Georges Perec: Ellis Island, I Remember, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

To hear more from Tara follow her on Instagram: @taracheesman or subscribe (and you should!) to her Substack: Ex Libris.

Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere.

Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic

Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs

This week we discuss Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants, an absolutely wonderful gem of a novel from French author Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell. In 150ish pages Énard recreates the Constantinople of the early 16th Century and the brief time Michelangelo resided there to build a grand bridge. If you’ve not read Énard before this is an absolutely fantastic jumping on point.

(We have done A LOT of New Directions this season (with more to come), which isn’t a bad thing but, yes, we’ve noticed and we are trying to be mindful of representing other presses doing the good work of translation.)

Towards the end of the episode Lori mentions a lecture Énard delivered at Barnard College. You can find that here.

Click here to subscribe to our Substack and find us on the socials: @lostinredonda just about everywhere.

Music: “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” by Traffic

Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs

We're going weekly! As the episodes have grown longer we've decided to split them up so instead of discussing two titles per episode (and delivering a 2+ hour podcast) every other week we're switching to one title every week. A guide to the next few episodes will be up on the Substack shortly.

This week we dig into Marie NDiaye's My Heart Hemmed In, translated by Jordan Stump and published by Two Lines Press. This one is Lori's recommendation and, folks, she did not miss. It's a phenomenal novel, and one that rather speaks to the moment we're in (have always been in?).

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Other titles by Marie NDiaye, including The Chef and Ladivine
• Kafka's, well, everything
• The Armies by Evelio Rosero, translated by Anne McLean
• The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana
• You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin
• Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lucio Cardoso, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
• Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns

Click here to subscribe to our Substack and do follow us on the socials, @lostinredonda across most apps (Twitter and Instagram for now; we’re coming for you eventually #booktok).

Music: “Estos Dias” by Enrique Urquijo

Logo design: Flynn Kidz Designs

This episode's discussion begins with a reading from Kundera's THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING.

I cannot stress this enough - if you go out and get one of Kundera's middle period novels (and you should, right now) you need to get the Aaron Asher translations. He worked closely with Kundera in the 90's and they really are superior in every way.

We get pretty french this week.

In 1972 the exhibition Woman House marked a pivotal  moment in the history of feminist art. Women artists, excluded from  galleries and museums, decided to take over an abandoned house in Los  Angeles to create feminist art works and performances, to alert the art  world of the profound inequality between genders. 

Almost forty years later, the exhibition Women House that  took place at the Monnaie de Paris in 2016 focused on the way in which  women artists explored representations of the home, the domestic sphere  and architecture. There, several generations of feminist artists were  brought together. 

In spring 2020, the cofounders of AWARE Camille Morineau, curator of the exhibition Women House  at the Monnaie de Paris, and writer Julie Wolkenstein, have created the  podcast in response to the confinement imposed by the COVID-19  pandemic. 

In the first episode of Women House, director and cofounder of AWARE Camille Morineau chose five excerpts from a text that is particularly dear to her: Writing [Écrire] by Marguerite Duras.
 

AWARE is a non-profit organization co-founded in 2014 by Camille Morineau.

AWARE’s podcast Women House is made possible by the support of Belinda de Gaudemar.
Produced by Elodie Royer. Sound by Andrew Nelson.

The english version of this episode is read by Muriel Zagha.  

Picture credits : Marguerite Duras on the set of the movie Écrire [Writing], directed by Benoit Jacquot, 1993, © Helene Bamberger/Opale / Bridgeman Images 

Dans ce premier épisode de Women House, Camille Morineau, directrice et co-fondatrice d’AWARE, lit cinq extraits d’un ouvrage qui lui est particulièrement cher : Écrire, de Marguerite Duras.

Duras Marguerite, Écrire, Paris, Gallimard, Folio, 1993.
Extraits lus : p. 13 – 14 ; p. 15 – 16 ; p. 17 – 18 ; p. 19 – 20 ; p. 24 – 26

 AWARE est une association loi 1901 à but non lucratif co-fondée en 2014 par Camille Morineau.

Un projet produit par AWARE et rendu possible grâce au soutien de Belinda de Gaudemar.
Réalisation : Elodie Royer. Musique originale : Andrew Nelson

Crédit photographique : Marguerite Duras sur le tournage d'Écrire 1993 ©Helene Bamberger Opale, Bridgeman Images