On the 25th of January, the soft launch of After Nora by Penelope Curtis will give you the chance to read After Nora three months before publication. There will be a reading by the author followed by a book signing and drinks.

On the 23rd of June 2023, Eastbound author Maylis de Kerangal was in conversation with Catriona Seth at Balliol College as part of the Maison Française d’Oxford Alumni Association Day.

What is "reality" in fiction and what is "truth" in a literary sense ? Join author Lucie Paye and her translator Natasha Lehrer for discussion on Absence. Author and translator will be interviewed by founder of Les Fugitives Cécile Lee, to share their perspectives on fiction and literary truth.

Listed in the Financial Times‘ mid-year best fiction in translation, Lucie Paye‘s remarkable debut novel Absence delves into the artistic process. While a painter battling against the blank canvas sees a mysterious female figure emerge under his brushes, a dying woman writes to her long-lost son.

Joined by Michèle Roberts, whose latest novel Cut Out focuses on the young women assisting Matisse in the making of his famous cut-outs, Lucie Paye and her translator Natasha Lehrer, will discuss art as creation and destruction, the creative role of the unconscious, the power of love against loss and translation as a revelatory process.

Tickets and more info here.

Meet Shumona Sinha and Maylis de Kerangal in a conversation about their newly translated short novels, Down with the Poor! and Eastbound.

Joined by translator & author Lauren Elkin and Russel Williams, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature (American University of Paris), they will discuss states of confinement and State violence, freedom of movement and freedom of speech, identification (or not) with the Other (with or without a common language), and the role of literature in revealing boundaries as grey areas.

Tickets and more info here.

Where are we safe? Maylis de Kerangal’s Eastbound tells the story of a Russian conscript looking for escape on the Trans-Siberian railway and finding a French woman who might offer it. The Khan, Saima Mir’s debut, follows a British-Asian lawyer as she returns to her northern hometown after her father’s murder, which has left a crime syndicate in disarray.

More information and tickets here.

The outsider experience is central to the newly translated, prize-winning novels by Fatima Daas and Shumona Sinha. In her rhapsodic debut, The Last One, Daas tries to find herself amid the contradictions of being French-Algerian, Muslim and gay. Sinha’s critically acclaimed Down with the Poor! offers a deeply emotional account and morally complex critique of European asylum systems and the bureaucracies and mindsets upholding the status quo.

More info and tickets here.

We invite you to join Lucie Paye and her translator Natasha Lehrer, to toast the publication of Lucie’s debut novel Absence on 21 June, at Tenderbooks, just a few minutes away from the National Gallery (which features in the book!)

Starts at 6pm, with a reading from Lucie at 6.45pm.

Please RSVP to Jessie, at publicist@lesfugitives.com

Join Lauren Elkin and Alexandra Kingston-Reese in conversation about the contemporary essay in this free online event.

Organised by Tangerine Press, the Uncorrected Independent Publishers’ Fair brings together seven of the UK's best indie publishers: Flipped Eye Publishing, Les Fugitives, Prototype, Repeater Books, Rough Trade Books, Strange Attractor Press, Tangerine Press + L-13 Light Industrial Workshop "dishonesty box".

On the opening night of this year’s Beyond Words Festival, Jeanne Benameur and her translator Bill Johnston will be in conversation with critically acclaimed debut author of Keeping the House Tice Cin.

They will discuss Jeanne’s recently published UK debut The Child Who and its poetic exploration of grief, intergenerational silences, the limits of hospitality and nature's power to heal, interspersed with live readings from the book in French and English.

More information and tickets here.

As part of this year’s Beyond Words Festival in Scotland, Jeanne Benameur will be in conversation with her translator Bill Johnston.

They will discuss Jeanne’s recently published UK debut The Child Who and its poetic exploration of grief, intergenerational silences, the limits of hospitality and nature's power to heal, interspersed with live readings from the book in French and English.

More information and tickets here.

Join Lauren Elkin and UCL Urban Laboratory co-director & English Literature Professor Matthew Beaumont at UCL, where they’ll be discussing Lauren’s love letter to Paris in iPhone notes No.91/92: notes on a Parisian commute.

From musings on Virginia Woolf and Georges Perec, to her first impressions in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks, Lauren Elkin’s bus diary queries the lines between togetherness and being apart, between the everyday and the eventful, as she registers the ordinary makings of a city and its people.

The event is free and can be booked here.

To celebrate the publication of Erica Van Horn’s new book We Still Have the Telephone , published on 11 April in Les Fugitives’ new English originals collection The Quick Brown Fox, the author will read excerpts from her book, introduced by Trinity College Professor Julie Bates, then join in conversation with poet Maurice Scully on the occasion of his latest collection Airs, published by Shearsman.

The event is free and open to the public - no need to book. Join the writers for a drink afterwards at the pub across the road!