reading

Meeting with writer Charif Majdalani

30.03.2023

Orient-Express programming #1

Thursday, March 30, 7:30 pm
Grand Salon, Villa Médicis
Events in French

Free event, reservation required

We kindly ask you to cancel your reservation if you no longer wish to attend, to give other people the opportunity to take part in the event.

There are no plans to record or broadcast this event.

As part of the cultural program around the exhibition Orient-Express: itineraries of a modern mythwhich explores train travel as a place of possibilities, Villa Medici is organizing a meeting with Franco-Lebanese writer Charif Majdalani.

The experience of travel, both as fantasy and reality, is at the heart of the novelist’s work. Rail travel plays an important role in Caravanserai (2007), the modern odyssey of Samuel Ayyad and his palace in pieces, transported from the banks of the Nile to the snows of Mount Lebanon. In Possible Lives (2018), the writer tells the story of a young Lebanese fascinated by European humanism in the 17th century, when he arrives in Rome. This literary rendezvous will be an opportunity to immerse yourself in a travel reverie thanks to the power of fiction.

After a reading of texts from the writer’s bibliography, this event will be accompanied by a discussion addressing the central themes of his literature, which interweaves elsewhere and history, individual destinies and family epics. Following the event, Charif Majdalani will be available for a book signing, in partnership with the Libreria Stendhal – Librairie française de Rome.

A leading figure in French-language literature, Charif Majdalani teaches French literature at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. He wrote his first novel in 2005, followed by eight others translated into six languages and awarded prestigious literary prizes.

His books includeHistoire de la Grande Maison (2005), Caravansérail (2007, prix Tropiques and prix François Mauriac de l’Académie française), Le Dernier Seigneur de Marsad (2013), Villa des femmes (2015, prix Jean Giono), L’Empereur à pied (2017), Beyrouth 2020, journal d’un effondrement (2020, Femina, prix spécial du jury), and Dernière oasis (2021).

Biography of Charif Majdalani

Born in Lebanon in 1960, Charif Majdalani first defended a thesis on Antonin Artaud at the University of Aix-en-Provence, before returning to Lebanon in 1999 to take up the post of Head of the French Literature Department at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, where he still teaches.

Since 2006, he has been a member of the editorial board of L’Orient littéraire. He also writes opinion articles for L’Orient-Le Jour, Le Monde, Libération and La Montagne, and regularly publishes a column inLa Croix.

Charif Madjalani