[Article of the month] The authors the editors dream of meeting

This May, the editors of the literature category of JustFocus decided to share with you the authors they dream of meeting and explain why. 

Alexia : Charlotte Delbo

My passion for Charlotte Delbo was born following my baccalaureate in French, indeed I had the chance to study one of her works. Deeply touched by his story, I finally read the rest of his work recently because the first book had upset me. I dream of meeting this woman who is, in my eyes, a symbol of the Resistance but also a great writer who has lived so much. She managed to survive a period of history thanks to incredible moral strength but also thanks to culture. Following the liberation of the camps, she wrote None of Us Will Return, the story of the months spent in Auschwitz. Then she locked it in a drawer until 1965, when she published it with Gonthier. It is the first volume of a trilogy, Auschwitz et après, which will be published in its entirety by Editions de Minuit from 1970.

Kler: Stephen King & Oscar Wilde

King: I think it's no surprise, a majority of my articles are reviews of his novels! Since I first read a King novel, my love for his books has only amplified. After loving a few, I wanted, out of curiosity, to go watch/read interviews with King. This only increased the good impression I had of him: he is a very humble person, simple in his way of being, and obviously, very intelligent. I really think King is a literary genius. All his works are very well written, complete, and address themes very well explored and worked. Since I have known King, he has become a pillar in my literary culture. Far from being a "genre" writer, Stephen King is above all a writer who writes about the human being, his emotions, his limits, his life, his death, and many other themes. None of his works leave me insensitive, always leaving me with many questions in my mind. I would like to meet him so that I can discuss it, and just be able to discuss the meaning of life with him. 

Wilde: Wilde is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant authors I have had the opportunity to read. First of all, his very fluid and divine writing makes his works very accessible and full of beauty, and between us, I wish I could ask him what are his secrets to write so well! Beyond that, his philosophical reflections on many topics covered in his books make me want to discuss them with him. The Portrait of Dorian Gray being one of my favorite books of all time, I would love to be able to share a conversation about the place of art with him, and dig deeper into the reflection on art and literature, on art and beauty, on human vices and love. In short, so many things that I could obviously never do since Oscar Wilde died in Paris on October 30, 1900.

Julie : Milan Kundera

First of all, because he is a wise gentleman, who will celebrate his 90th birthday next year, and he has lived a large part of the history of the twentieth century. I have a lot of questions to ask him about the different eras he went through. His journey is simply breathtaking. He lived and suffered in Soviet Czechoslovakia, which offered him outlaw status, forcing him into hiding. He lost his teaching job and his books were removed from bookstores and libraries, it must have had a funny effect. I would love to discuss freedom of expression with him, who sees writing as a catharsis. He arrived in France in 1975 and was naturalized in 1981 by François Mitterrand. Initially translated, Kundera eventually mastered the French language and its subtlety enough to correct the translation of his works. And then, he writes the rest of his work in French, which is obviously not his mother tongue. I would thank him for having composed The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Slowness, which address many exciting themes such as human intimate relationships, authenticity, or the dysfunction of speech on a philosophical background. Finally, he is one of the (very) few authors to have entered the Pléiade during his lifetime, and has not granted interviews since 1985, so spending a special moment with him would be an honor, because I consider Milan Kundera as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century still alive.

The editors would like to meet more authors, of course, but for this article we had to choose the ones they absolutely want to meet. We hope it will make you want to discover these authors…