French Voices at the Boston Book Festival

In conversation with Gaëlle Belem

Gaëlle Bélem is an award-winning novelist from La Réunion and the first woman from the island to be published by Gallimard. Her debut novel, There’s a Monster Behind the Door, was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Her second novel, The Rarest Fruit, brings to life the extraordinary true story of Edmond Albius, the enslaved teenager from La Réunion whose discovery revolutionized vanilla cultivation around the world. A captivating story of resilience, discovery, and an overlooked figure in history, the novel was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2025, the only French novel to make the list that year, and a Washington Independent Review of Books Best Book of the Year. Bélem also teaches Latin, history, and geography and serves as an associate judge in a juvenile court on La Réunion.

She will be interviewed by Barbara Bouquegneau, President and Executive Director of the French Library.

Talk: 10:00 – 11:00 AM | Book Signing: Following the talk

In conversation with Mathias Énard

In conversation with Anne Pauly

In Before I Forget, Pauly recounts the aftermath of her father’s death and the complicated task of mourning a man who was at once a self-taught philosopher and romantic, and an alcoholic whose violence marked his family. As Anne sorts through his belongings and prepares his funeral, she tries to reconcile these contradictory versions of the man she has lost. Told with wit and tenderness, the novel is a tragicomic exploration of grief, family, class, and the complicated bonds between parents and children.

A Labor of Love: The Art of Literary Translation

What does it take to carry a writer’s voice from one language into another? Award-winning literary translators Sam Taylor and Emma Ramadan come together for a conversation about translation as both an art and a labor of love; the creative choices, challenges, and discoveries involved in bringing literature across languages and cultures, and the essential role translators play in introducing Francophone voices to new readers.

Emma Ramadan is an educator and award-winning literary translator of more than 40 books from French, with a particular focus on experimental literature, overlooked women writers, and voices from the Arab and Francophone worlds. She received the 2021 PEN Translation Prize for Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying and the 2018 Albertine Prize for Anne Garréta’s Not One Day. Her translations include works by Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes, and Maud Ventura.

Sam Taylor is an award-winning British novelist and literary translator who has translated more than 70 books from French into English. His authors include David Diop, Joël Dicker, Maylis de Kerangal, Marcel Proust, Tatiana de Rosnay, Riad Sattouf, Leïla Slimani. His honors include the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and his translations have twice been nominated for the International Booker Prize. Before becoming a translator, Taylor was an arts journalist at The Observer in London and is also the author of several novels, most recently The Two Loves of Sophie Strom.

The conversation will be moderated by Stéphanie Ravillon, Associate Teaching Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University, whose work focuses on translation, contemporary French and Francophone culture, and questions of cultural and linguistic identity. She is the author of a forthcoming book on translation and has led a series of literary translation workshops at the French Library.

Talk : 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM | Book Signing: Following the talk

The French Library is proud to continue its longstanding collaboration with Villa Albertine Boston and the Boston Book Festival, with support from MIT Literature and MIT French+.