Laurent Mauvignier

Laurent Mauvignier
Period: 2008-2009
Profession: Writer Laurent Mauvignier was born in Tours in 1967. After studying Fine Arts, he devoted himself exclusively to writing. He has published several novels with Editions de Minuit, including
Loin d’eux ,
Apprendre à finir ,
Ceux d’à côté , and
Dans la foule , for which he has won several awards (Prix Fénéon and RTBF, Prix Wepler and Livre Inter, and Prix FNAC). His novels are monologues that attempt to circumscribe reality, but come up against the unspeakable and the limits of expression. A language that attempts to put into words absence and mourning, love and lack, as if trying to hold on to what slips through our fingers, between the years. Dans la foule marks a turning point: the question of the relationship between the intimate and the collective is amplified, the question of the articulation between personal and collective history, a mass phenomenon experienced through the prism of a singular gaze. The failure of personal memory, the impossibility of saying what has been. Des hommes is a novel in which, based on a contemporary incident, a man sees the wounds of the Algerian war reopen. The book will be published by Editions de Minuit in 2009. The Roman project is based on tourism: how can we tell what is individual experience in mass tourism? What are the micro-histories, the ideas, the thoughts – lived, fantasized, particular – behind tourist rites? And what happens to the objects of tourist veneration? What happens to people’s memories and culture? What use(s) do we make of the past to nourish our present? Press review and full bibliography at: www.laurent-mauvignier.net