Rencontre with Eric Fottorino and Hugo Hamilton

The Franco-Irish Literary Festival in Dublin (27 to 29 March) celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. We have teamed up with the Alliance Française de Dublin to present this preview 'taster' at the CCI - a literary evening bringing together a renowned writer from each country, Eric Fottorino and Hugo Hamilton. Journalist and former editor of Le Monde from 2007 to 2011, Eric Fottorino is co-founder of the weekly magazine Le 1 and the quarterly magazines America, Zadig and Légende. He has also published some fifteen award-winning novels, many of which explore a searching for roots and identity. Hugo Hamilton is the best-selling author of The Speckled People, an autobiographical account of his complex upbringing in 1950/60s Dublin by a German mother and an Irish father who forbade him to speak English. The novel won the prestigious ‘Prix Femina étranger’ in 2004 and has become a classic of contemporary literature. The authors will be in conversation with critic, translator and academic Clíona Ní Ríordáin about themes common to their work: the questioning of filial relationships, identity and language.

On Friday 7 March at 7.30pm, Clíona Ní Ríordáin is presenting a second literary evening at the CCI entitled ‘The prose poem: Franco-Irish conversations and readings’, with the poets Nathalie Quintane and Martina Evans.