May 3, 2008 | The French Institute Alliance Française | New York City

With: Jo Nesbø, Nina Revoyr, Saša Stanišić, Juan Gabriel Vásquez; moderated by Lila Azam Zanganeh 

 

 LISTEN
• Entire event (51:48)

Discussed: Experience and the story; the “I” in the protagonist; facts to fiction over time and generations; novel vs. memoir; territorial vs. external literary influence; using fact as a springboard for fiction; the danger of research to the imaginative process; the bias for memoirs; novels “selling out someone;” writing detached from fact and self; questions for the authors.

Cosponsored by the French Institute Alliance Française

Novelists are those rarest of literary alchemists, able to blend elements of historical fact with personal truths and intimate visions. From Nazi ties in Norway in the great Scandinavian crime fiction of Jo Nesbø to the lives of blacklisted Jewish immigrants in Colombia in Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s majesterial The Informers; from Japanese-Americans in central Los Angeles in Nina Revoyr’s multiracial noir thrillers to Bosnian refugees adrift in Germany in Saša Stanišić’s stunning debut, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramaphone—all of these writers have, in their own ways, helped to reclaim and reshape aspects of their countries’ histories.

From the PEN Blogs

• Tayari Jones
This Festival has taken me to places where I have never been. And I am not talking about intellectually. This festival has taken me to swanky parts of Manhattan where the likes of me seldom tread. [More]