Boston Book Festival with Christophe Boltanski

About the Book

Deep in the recesses of a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of Paris, a family's patriarch withdraws to a tiny hideout during the Nazi occupation. Although he survives, his descendants are changed forever by the secret that the family harbored during those years--fearful, reluctant to leave the house alone, yet brimming with creativity and genius. Meet "the Bolts." The Safe House is the prize-winning memoir by French writer Christophe Boltanski about his famous family's Paris mansion and the eccentric clan that it sheltered from the 1930s onward.

About the Author

Christophe Boltanski is a French journalist, writer and chronicler, laureate of the prix Femina 2015 for his novel La Cache. After he completed his studies in 1987 at the Centre de formation des journalistes, Christophe Boltanski worked for the Le Progrès Egyptien (within the framework of his national service then for the daily Libération from 1989 to 2007 ; after being a war correspondent during the Gulf war, he was the correspondent of this newspaper in Jerusalem (1995–2000) and then in London (2000–2004). Since 2007 he has been working for the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, while collaborating on the website Rue 89.

In 2000 he was awarded the Prix Bayeux-Calvados des correspondants de guerre for a report on a mine in Congo, in the Nord-Kivu region: "Les Mineurs de l'enfer".

About the Moderator

About the Boston Book Festival

Since 2009, the Boston Book Festival celebrates the power of words to stimulate, agitate, unite, delight, and inspire by holding year-round events culminating in an annual, free festival that promotes a culture of reading and ideas and enhances the vibrancy of Boston.

About the Cultural Services at the French Embassy

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S. provide a platform for exchange and innovation between French and American artists, intellectuals, educators, students, the tech community, and the general public. Based in New York City, Washington D.C., and eight other cities across the US, the Cultural Services develop the cultural economy by focusing on six principal fields of action: the arts, literature, cinema, the digital sphere, French language and higher education.