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World Book Club: World Book Cafe: Paris

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World Book Cafe: Paris

18/03/2023 GMT

BBC World Service - World Book Club, World Book Cafe: Paris

Meet authors Mahir Guven, Blandine Rinkel, Laurent Petitmangin and Capucine Delattre

Octavia Bright meets authors Mahir Guven, Blandine Rinkel, Laurent Petitmangin and Capucine Delattre who are challenging and disrupting France's literary traditions.

World Book Café travels to Paris to meet some of the French capital’s newest writers. Authors Mahir Guven, Blandine Rinkel, Laurent Petitmangin and Capucine Delattre discuss taking on the literary establishment and finding new ways to express themselves. Like many places in the world, questions of equality, diversity and freedom of expression are top of the agenda in France. But it is complicated; the  ideal of universalism - meaning every citizen is considered to be the same regardless of class or ethnicity - is at the heart of the French republic. Does this 'universalism' leave space for the 21st Century desire to celebrate difference, and how can writing help reconcile these complex ideas? 

Image: The skyline of Paris, 9 December 2022 (Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

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