On Writing Fiction and Francophone Literature by Michaël Ferrier

Michaël Ferrier is an award-winning novelist, essayist and academic who has Mauritian roots, grew up in Chad and France and now lives in Japan where he is Professor of French at Chuo University in Tokyo.  

He is the author of several novels, Sympathie pour le Fantôme, Paris, Gallimard, 2010; Mémoires d’outre-mer, Paris, Gallimard, 2015; François, portrait d’un absent, Paris, Gallimard, 2018; Scrabble, une enfance tchadienne, Paris, Mercure de France, 2019. He has written texts on Japanese culture (The Temptation of France, the Temptation of Japan: Crossed Views (ed.), Arles, Éditions Picquier, 2003; Tokyo, Petits portraits de l’aube, Paris, Gallimard, 2004; Fukushima, récit d’un désastre, Paris, Gallimard, 2008), as well as essays about contemporary art and literature. He has also written three documentary films on the nuclear industry worldwide (collected and published by Gallimard under the title Notre ami l'atome en 2021).

His works engage with a broad range of issues such as family, memory, colonialism, identity. They cross both generic and geographical boundaries and resist attempts at categorization. Variously described as a writer of the Tout-monde (by the famed author from Martinique, Patrick Chamoiseau) or as a ‘transnational novelist’ (see forthcoming event at Birkbeck, London), Michaël Ferrier doesn’t just see himself as a ‘Francophone writer’ or a ‘French author’. M. Ferrier has won several literary prizes: the Asia Literary Prize in 2005, the Golden Door Prize in 2010, the Édouard Glissant Prize in 2012 (for Fukushima, récit d’un désastre), the Franz Hessel Prize for Contemporary Literature in 2015, and the Prix Décembre, one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, in 2018. 

The event is free but please contact Prof. Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze for registration and Zoom link: catherine.dousteyssier@durham.ac.uk.