Lançon joins NYU professor Stéphane Gerson for an in-depth conversation about his new book 'Le Lambeau.'

Journalist Philippe Lançon

Philippe Lançon, a journalist, author, and contributor to Charlie Hebdo, was gravely wounded in the 2015 attack at the magazine’s offices. This trauma upended his relationship to the world, to writing, to reading, to love, and to friendship. As he attempted to reconstruct his life, Lançon reread Proust, Thomas Mann, Kafka, and others, in search of guidance. Le Lambeau is an honest, intimate account of a man seeking to put his life back together after it has been torn apart. It is a book about survival, resilience, and reconstruction, about transformation, about one man’s shifting relationship to time, to writing and journalism, to truth, and to his own body.

On Friday, January 31, NYU’s La Maison Française is pleased to host a conversation about Le Lambeau. The event takes place between 2:00-3:30 p.m., and will be conducted in French. It is co-sponsored by the Institute of French Studies and La Maison Française. More information is available here.

All events are held at La Maison Française, 16 Washington Mews (between University Place and Fifth Avenue), and are free and open to the public. Seating for free events is on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, call 212.998.8750 or visit nyu.edu/maisonfrancaise. Subways: R, W (8th Street); 6 (Astor Place); A, B, C, D, E, F, M (West 4th Street).

Philippe Lançon is a French journalist and writer born in 1963. His memoir, Le Lambeau, won the 2018 Prix Femina, Prix du Roman News, and Prix Renaudot Jury’s Special Prize, and was also named Best Book of the Year by the magazines Lire and Les Inrockuptibles. He is the author of the novels L’Elan (2013) and Les îles (2011). His reviews on arts and literature for Libération have made him one of France’s finest cultural critics.

Stéphane Gerson is a cultural historian, professor of French, French Studies and History at NYU, and the director of NYU’s Institute of French Studies. He is the author of several books, including a memoir, Disaster Falls (2017), chronicling the aftermath of his eight-year son Owen’s death.

Editor’s Note
For over six decades, La Maison Française of New York University has served as a major forum for French-American cultural and intellectual exchange, offering contemporary perspectives on myriad French and Francophone issues. Its rich program of lectures, symposia, concerts, screenings, exhibitions, and special events provides an invaluable resource to the university community, as well as the general public. For more, please visit nyu.edu/maisonfrancaise.

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