Quebec will be the guest of honor next April at the Paris Book Festival, the most important book fair in the French-speaking world. An honor that comes at the right time, as interest in Quebec literature enjoys a certain enthusiasm across the Atlantic in the wake of the success of the latest novels by Kevin Lambert and Éric Chacour.
“The vision of Quebec literature in France is emerging. This was particularly striking during the last literary season. We sense a real tropism from booksellers, journalists and publishers. There is a real curiosity for a way of telling stories that is different,” noted the general director of the Paris Book Festival, Jean-Baptiste Passé, in an interview with Duty.
Mr. Passé is in Montreal this week for the Book Fair, which opened Wednesday at the Palais des congrès. At his side on Thursday, the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, and the Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, will confirm that Quebec would be the guest of the next Paris Book Festival, which will take place from April 12 to 14.
This flagship event in French-speaking literature welcomes around 100,000 readers every year. Each year, a different country is the guest of honor. For the 2024 edition, Quebec succeeds Italy. Concretely, a delegation of around thirty Quebec authors will be expected at the ephemeral Grand Palais on Champ-de-Mars, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
Universal literature
The last time that Quebec was in the spotlight in Paris was in 1999. At the time, Dany Laferrière had just participated in Culture broththe most prominent literary program in France at the time.
A lot of ground has been covered since then. Dany Laferrière became the first Quebecer to sit on the Académie française. Dominique Fortier won the Renaudot essay prize in 2020 for Paper Cities. May our joy remain by Kevin Lambert, who was also part of the first selection for the prestigious Goncourt, won the Médicis Prize at the beginning of the month, one of the main honors in the French literary world. Also this fall, Éric Chacour was in the running for the Femina prize with What I know about youhis first novel.
“We understood that contemporary literature is universal literature. It is perhaps premature to say this for the general public, but it is certainly true for the literary world. […] Today when we read Éric Chacour, we read him as such. We do not restrict a Quebec author to his Quebec origin,” emphasizes Jean-Baptiste Passé.
My cabin in Canada
The general director of the Paris Book Festival does not believe that Quebec literature still suffers from snobbery in French intellectual circles. Quebec is not confined to a folkloric outlook either, he affirms.
In 2022, however, the final selection for the Québec-France Literary Prize aroused controversy, while the three books nominated were historical novels set during the period of New France which had received very little attention. in Quebec and which were not representative of the literary diversity of Quebec.
“If there is an image of folklore that we can still have in France, it is that of this preserved territory. Like a call to return to the earth, to naturalness,” recognizes Jean-Baptiste Passé, referring to My Forests by the Quebec poet Hélène Dorion, a collection which is currently studied in school curriculum in France.