Literary phenomenon Constance Debré on freedom, transformation and literature.
During the To harbour festival, we welcome the French literary phenomenon Constance Debré. With the trilogy Play Boy (2018), Love Me Tender (2020) and Nom (2022) she established herself as one of the cutting-edge voices of contemporary French literature. She won accolades including the Prix Les Inrockuptibles for this work. In these three novels, Debré follows a protagonist who is confronted with a traumatic event that turns her life upside down. But instead of playing the victim, she harnesses the moment as a radical turning point - a chance to reinvent herself, unbound by conventions and expectations.
‘Literature offers an escape from obligation’, says Debré. She writes about events, shifts that bring you to a different place, antipathetic to conformism or a clearly delineated identity. She turns against ‘la vie lamentable’: a life in which you are not truly living, devoid of choices and responsibility. Over the course of the evening, Julie Cafmeyer will converse with Debré on the meaning and power of literature, on transformation and freedom - and on the (im)possibility of mooring somewhere permanently.