18e Festival du Livre, Mouans Sartoux

Last Saturday we went to 18e Festival du Livre , 18th Book Festival, at Mouans-Sartoux, about twenty minutes by bus from Le Cannet. It was our first visit to the festival, and we benefited from our appartement location that was not that far from Mouans-Sartoux.

There were several well-known names invited to the festival on that Saturday. Jose Bove, the leader of the rural movements and a very well-known intermondialmism, and Max Gallo, a French historian, Bernard Weber, a very popular French fiction writer, and Amos Gitai, an Israelian film producer, to name a few.


When we arrived, we went to Strada, a cinema used as an auditorium, where Bernard Weber was interviewed on his new book Le Souffle des Dieux. We saw a quite a long queue of people to enter the building.After wandering around several minutes around Strada, and wondered whether we wanted to enter or not, we finally decided to go to children section behind the Strada.

Despite of the entry price that was quite expensive, 3 Euros, there were a lot of people, with children, in the section. There were a lot of books presented here, and some writers were presents and they all were ready to talk to you and to sign books you bought. Our son was not that enthusiastic though which was understandable since the crowd might be unsupportable for him. Nevertheless, he showed his interest on a book Fenouil , a small rabbit. It seems that his teacher has already introduced him to the series. We bought one book of the series, Fenouil, Reviens! and the illustrator Ève Tharlet generously drew an illustration of Fenouil and signed the book.

In the meantime, there were Jose Bove in the speaker. He spoke at café littéraire, not very far from Strada. We moved to the café littéraire to have a look on the literatures presented there. On the way to the café littéraire, we saw a long queue of people to see a debat under Naître femme, un délit mondial ? title.
When we entered the café littéraire, Jose Bove has just finished his interview. It didn't really matter for us, because we were there not especially for him. Like in the children section, there were an impressive number of writers wait for you ready to sign your books. And they were not local writers, some of them had even several literature prizes, others have best seller books!

The first books really caught my eyes were the books of an egyptian Sonallah Ibrahim, especially his newest book, Amrikanli: Un Automne à San Fransisco, or Amrikanli, an Autumn in San Fransisco a translated book from Egyptian Arab. In the mean time, it was Yasmina Khadra, on the speaker. He is an Algerian writer and he was presenting his new book l'Attentat or The Attack. He was an interesting person and had an energics way to answer the interviewer. Later, I knew that the book was in the top ten of selling in October of Lire magazine, and his other books Les Hirondelles de Kaboul or The Swallows of Kabul and A quoi rêvent les Loups, or What do Wolfs Dream Of (the book was translated to Wolf Dreams) to have an interesting success. I decided to buy the L'Attentat and the author, Mohammed Moulessehoul -- his real name -- signed the book. Just next to Yasmina Khadra, a highly-reputed writer that Jean-Pierre Milovanoff was also there with his newest book, Le Pays de Vivants.

My wife was interested in other writer, Jack Boland, he was rewarded to last year festival Prix L'Inedit for his book, Revers de Mémoire, freshly published last week. She was also interested to a Chinese writer Xinran with her book Chinoises (English version of this book:
The Good Women of China), unfortunately she was not there (she was in a debat in other building).

Finally, we took some times to have a look on some bouiquinists very well represented outside the building. There were nothing special to mention except that some old Diderot books, some classical books and comics.
In addition, my son could no longer support the crowd.

Summary
Interesting books:
1. Amrikanli: Un Automne à San Fransisco, Sonallah Ibrahim
2. L'Attentat, Yasmina Khadra
3. Les Hirondelles de Kaboul, Yasmina Khadra
4. Le Pays de Vivants Jean-Pierre Milovanoff
5. Revers de Mémoire, Jack Boland
6. Chinoises, Xinran
7. Pour la désobéissance civique, José Bové