Paroles de créatrices" cycle: Dialogue between Négar Djavadi and Elitza Gueorguieva

Cycle "Paroles de créatrices"

As part of Elitza Gueorguieva's writing residency

Dialogue between Négar Djavadi and Elitza Gueorguieva

Session moderated by Aline Marchand, in complicity with Marielle Anselmo

This meeting is the fourth in a series organized as part of French-Bulgarian writer Elitza Gueorguieva's writing residency at Inalco. She leads two writing workshops for undergraduate and graduate students. She is taking part in a series of meetings with women writers who share with her the fact of being translingual, i.e. of having switched from their mother tongue to French, the language of writing.

The discussion will revolve around the novel Désorientale by Négar Djavadi, which unfolds the history of Iran over three generations, through the apprenticeship story of Kimiâ Sadr, daughter of a journalist who opposes the Iranian regime and goes into exile with her family in Europe. In this novelistic fresco, the languages spoken, heard and dreamed of as a child (Persian, the Mazandarani dialect and French) cross geographical borders to question representations of the East in French society today.

Négar Djavadi was born in Iran and lives in the Paris region. She arrived in France at the age of eleven with her family, opponents of the Shah and then Khomeini. After studying cinema in Brussels (INSAS), Négar Djavadi directed documentaries and wrote fiction scripts. In 2016, her first novel, Désorientale, was published by Liana Levi, winning awards in France, Belgium and the United States, and translated into some fifteen languages. In parallel with her career as a screenwriter, she has signed Arène (2020) with the same publisher and La Dernière Place (2023) in the "des nouvelles du réel" collection with Stock.

Elitza Gueorguieva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has published two novels with Editions Verticales: Les cosmonautes ne font que passer (2016) and Odyssée des filles de l'Est (2024). She has directed several documentary yarns including Every wall is a door (2017) and Our silent place (2021). She creates performances for various theatrical venues.

This writing residency is part of the Région Île-de-France residency program. It is organized by the Master de Traduction Littéraire, with the support of the PLIDAM, CERLOM and CREE teams, and the collaboration of UMR THALIM.

Responsible: marielle.anselmo@inalco.fr

Contact: aline.marchand@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr