Sunday 16 October 10h00 Salle des Fetes
Jo Browning Wroe: A Terrible Kindness
A Terrible Kindness earned Jo a place in the Guardian's top 10 debut novelists of 2022 earlier this year. A multi-layered story that starts against the backdrop of the Aberfan disaster, it follows a young undertaker William, whose experience volunteering at the scene unleashes childhood memories he has fought hard to suppress.
The book skilfully offsets tragedy (both specific to the disaster and more generally) with uplifting, light-hearted and joyful elements, in a juxtaposition that we all recognise from life itself.
We're thrilled to be hosting the popular festival dinner for the first time since covid.
Join us on Saturday night for the chance to share a meal with the authors and get to know the people behind the books.
Reservations open now - priority booking for Festilitt Friends and Patrons
€30 per head for a 4 course meal, wine and coffee
Email info@festilitt.com to reserve your place now
Saturday 15 October 14h30 Salle des Fetes
Sarah Winman: Still Life
Sarah Winman was a huge LockdownLit hit, when she talked to us about Tin Man. We're delighted to welcome her in person to Parisot to talk about her latest novel, Still Life, a sweeping story set in Florence and London from WWII to the 1980s. Ulysses, a young, working-class British soldier meets Evelyn, a sixty-year-old art historian in a Tuscan wine cellar in 1944 as the war approaches, an encounter that diverts the course of Ulysses life for the next forty years.
Sarah's engrossing and wonderfully written novel is a gigantic love letter to art, to friendship, to fate, to Florence and, of course, to love, whatever shape and size it comes in.
the Parisot literary festival
Sunday 16 October 11h30 Salle des Fetes
Owen Pomery: Victory Point
Owen Pomery was due to come to Festilitt 2020 and has been patiently waiting for us to get back to a face to face event.
An architect by training, Owen is now an illustrator and graphic novelist. He will talk about his book, Victory Point, which follows Ellen, on a hot summer's day, returning to the coastal town of her childhood to see her father. The town, Victory Point, was a constructed as an interwar experiment to create an artistic and scientific haven alongside normal family dwellings, and Owen beautifully renders the architecture and the poignancy of Ellen's return, exploring the ideas of home, legacy and how we choose to live.
It's so exciting to be back to a fully face-to-face event this year, especially given that it is our 10th festival.
Celebrating our 10th festival
Festival dinner
2nd hand book sale
14, 15 & 16 October 2022
Festilitt
Sunday 16 October 14h30 Salle des Fetes
Lecture musicale:
Join us for a lecture musicale in French and English of a selection of amusing, touching and interesting letters from across the centuries, read by actress Nathalie Vidal, accompanied by her musicians and English readers.
Saturday 15 October 16h00 Salle des Fetes
Tessa Hadley: Free Love
After her wonderful online session in 2020, best-selling author Tessa Hadley returns to Festilitt in person this time, with an intimate and moving portrayal of family, love and betrayal. Fee Love follows Phyllis, a model suburban housewife who leaves her husband and children for the son of a family friend, experiencing her own intellectual and sexual awakening in sixties' London.
Whilst life in London is not the ideal she imagined, we come to learn that the perfect marriage she left behind is somewhat of an illusion and that her husband has a deep secret he has never shared.
Saturday 15 & Sunday 16 October in the Mairie
Our very popular 2nd-hand book sale will be open all week-end, with a great range of good quality fiction and non-fiction books for sale at extremely reasonable prices.
Saturday 15 October 10h30 Salle des Fetes
Nicholas Jubber: The Fairy Tellers
Traveller and award-winning writer Nick Jubber's fifth book, The Fairy Tellers, brings together the topics that have fascinated him for years: history, storytelling, nomadism, and the connections between them.
His book explores the lives of seven key figures in the history of fairy tales, including a Russian revolutionary, a bankrupt French aristocrat, a young Syrian runaway and a German apothecary's daughter. He leads us on wild and magical adventures, to uncover the lives of the mostly forgotten people behind our most beloved fairly tales, such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Hansel and Gretel.