French writing and politics
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed by presenter Shahidha Bari about her new role and her novel Lullaby which won the 2016 Prix Goncourt Plus Emile Chabal from the University of Edinburgh discusses Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah - a novel imagining the first Arab candidate for President is shot. The TV rights for the quartet of books have been sold and the first book is winning prizes and comparisons with the Neopolitan novels of Elena Ferrante. Fleur Darkin of Scottish Dance Theatre talks about her stage adaptation of L'Amant by Marguerite Duras, while Julia Waters from the University of Reading explains how the French colonial experience in Indochina informed the work of Duras and other writers.
Lullaby by Leïla Slimani is now published in English in a translation by Sam Taylor. Savages The Saint-Étienne Quartet Volume 1: The Wedding is written by Sabri Louatah and translated into English by Gavin Bowd. The Lover, adapted and directed by Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick, is at the Lyceum, Edinburgh from 20th January to 3rd February.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari. |
| 0:33.6 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, |
| 0:42.3 | which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. |
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| 0:56.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:59.9 | Hello. |
| 1:14.8 | As national anthems go, the Marseilles is one of the most magnificent, spirited and bellicose, |
| 1:18.2 | with a dash of what the French might call a certain ferocet. |
| 1:21.8 | Most anthems allow for a little patriotic tub-thumping, |
| 1:26.7 | but the line in the Marseillaise about the Saint-Ampur, or the impure of blood, |
| 1:28.6 | slain in French fields, conjures a particularly uneasy image for a country shaped by centurers |
| 1:32.8 | of colonialism and immigration. |
| 1:35.8 | But French culture has also been the place to make sense of that colonial past. |
| 1:40.6 | And in literature, particularly modern French writers have imagined their multicultural futures. |
| 1:46.1 | In today's programme, we talk with Laila Slamani, the Franco-Morocan novelist who won the pre-Goncourt in 2016 |
| 1:51.9 | and then, more unexpectedly, a ministerial appointment to President Macron's government in 2017. |
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