Meet with French author, Leïla Slimani, in San Francisco and the Bay Area
In 2016, Leïla Slimani won the Prix Goncourt (most prestigious Literature award in France) for her novel, Chanson douce (The Perfect Nanny). The French-Moroccan writer will come to San Francisco and the Bay Area in April to present her work.
Women Lit, a new program of the Bay Area Book Festival, welcomes Leila Slimani, winner of the Prix Goncourt in France, to discuss her novel The Perfect Nanny (translated by Sam Taylor). The novel has sold a million copies, sweeping Europe and now the United States. NPR called it "one of the most important books of the year." Wrote a reviewer in The New Yorker, "I've thought about [The Perfect Nanny] pretty much every day.... [It] felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than a compulsion.... I found it extraordinary."
Leila Slimani is the first Moroccan (and pregnant) woman to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, which she won for The Perfect Nanny. A journalist and frequent commentator on women's and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron's personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she now lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.
Leila Slimani attending 2 events in April is the result of the collaboration of Litquake, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and Booksmith, the landmark bookstire on Haight Street.
The story birefly...
When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau.
The Perfect Nanny was inspired by the tragedy that took place in New York in 2012 when a nanny stabbed to death 2 young children she was taking care of. Leila Slimani has insisted that her novel is a total fiction. The aweful story in the news was only the starting point. The author is exploring the mechanism of a tragedy, where power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness intertwine and let unpredictable insanity prevail.
Meet with Leïla Slimani in Berkeley, San Francisco and Palo Alto at Stanford University.
On April 8, 2018 in Berkeley : @ the Berkeley Repertory Theater
On April 9, 2018 in San Francisco : @ The Bindery
On April 10, 2018 at Stanford University : Lecture : Sexuality in Morocco and the Maghreb: An Absolutely Central Question to Society
The Perfect Nanny is already installed on shelves at Booksmith. Beyond the great interest of meeting with Leila Slimani, you will love to discover The Bindery. This special place has already had many lives: the renowned and emblematic red Vic Theater for decades, then a nice food court and now The Bindery, thanks to Booksmith. Once you enter the Bindery, you don't want to leave. It is like a cosy invitation to reading and meditation.
