Scottish writers Meaghan Delahunt and Alexander McCall Smith will be the guests of the upcoming edition of the "Étonnants Voyageurs” book festival in Saint-Malo from 11 to 13 June 2011.
On this occasion, the library invites you to (re)discover some of Scotland’s most famous authors translated in French, from the poet Robert Burns to the contemporary writers Kenneth White and John Burnside.
Don’t hesitate to visit or contact the library if you need more information!
Bibliography:
- Robert Burns: Poésie (821 BUR)
- Robert-Louis Stevenson : Intégrale des nouvelles volume 1 et 2 (R STEi), Journal de route en Cévennes(9104.4 STE), L’ile au trésor (AR STE) and A travers l’Ecosse (RSTE)
- John Burnside: Un mensonge sur mon père (R BUR)
- Andrew O’Hagan: Le crépuscule des pères (R OHA) and Sois près de moi (R OHA)
- Kenneth White: Mahamudra (821 WHI)
- Meaghan Delahunt: Le livre rouge (R DEL)
Summaries
Robert Burns
- Poésie, Aubier, 1994, 821 BUR
Robert Burns (25 Jan. 1759 – 21 July 1796) was a Scottish poet and a lyricist, widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. After the success of his poems (the Kilmarnock edition), he started to travel around Scotland, earning the status of the national bard. With the help of James Johnson and George Thomson, he collected and published folk songs from across Scotland. He also wrote some of the greatest poems: To a mouse, Tam o’ Shanter and Scots Wha Hae (for a long time an unofficial national anthem of the country). He spent the final years of his life in Dumfriesshire and prematurely died at the age of 37.
Robert Louis Stevenson
- Intégrale des nouvelles volume 1 et 2, Phébus, 2001, R STEi
- Journal de route en Cévennes, Privat, 1996, 9104.4 STE (Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879))
Le 22 septembre 1878, Robert-Louis Stevenson quittait Le Monastier-sur-Gazeille, près du Puy dans le Velay, pour entreprendre la traversée des Cévennes en compagnie d’une ânesse, "Modestine". Chaque soir, il prit soin de tenir son journal qui fut publié à Londres, en 1879, sous le titre "Voyage avec un âne dans les Cévennes".
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes recounts Stevenson’s 12-day, 120-mile solo hiking journey with his donkey Modestine through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France in 1878. It is one of the earliest accounts which presented hiking and camping outdoors as a recreational activity.
- L’île au trésor, Livre de poche, 1993, AR STE (Treasure Island, 1883)
L’île au trésor raconte les aventures de Jim Hawkins, un jeune garçon qui se retrouve en possession de la carte au trésor du célèbre pirate Capitaine Flint. Ce dernier est mort mais les membres de son ancien équipage courent après son trésor. Lorsque Jim décide d’embarquer à bord de l’Hispaniola en compagnie du docteur Livesey et du châtelain Trelawney à la recherche de l’île, le bateau est déjà rempli de pirates, prévenus par les indiscrétions de Trelawney.
Treasure Island is a tale of piracy, buried treasure, and adventure. Jim Hawkins is just a boy when he ends up in the possession of the map drawn by Captain Flint giving the whereabouts of his buried treasure. The pirate is now dead but many members of his old crew feel they have a fair claim to the treasure. By the time Jim is ready to sail with Squire Trelawney and doctor Livesey to Treasure Island, the ship Hispaniola is crewed by the entire old murderous mob who sailed with Captain Flint!
- A travers l’Ecosse, Editions Complexe, 1992, RSTE
Compilation de récits de voyages, de souvenirs et autres textes rédigés pas Stevenson dès l’âge de 11 ans, ce livre présente l’Ecosse vue par Stevenson, de la côte de Fife aux Pentland Hills en passant par Edimbourg. Préface de Michel Le Bris.
This book is a compilation of Stevenson’s stories about his travels and other memories from Scotland, from Fife to the Pentland Hills.
Robert Louis Stevenson (13 Nov. 1850 – 3 Dec. 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. Pushed in his early years to pursue the family business (lighthouse engineering), he abandoned rapidly this path and started reading law. He qualified for the bar but never practiced law; instead he chose to devote himself to writing. Of a weak constitution, he travelled a lot with his family in search of warmer climates, from America to the islands in the eastern and central Pacific. He finally established himself in the Samoan Islands where he died, leaving his last novel "Weir of Hermiston" unfinished. Among his most famous works, you will find Treasure Island, Kidnapped and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
John Burnside
- Un mensonge sur mon père, Editions Métailié, 2009, R BUR (A lie about my father, 2006)
John Burnside a grandi au contact rude de la classe laborieuse écossaise puis ensuite anglaise. Son père, abandonné quand il était bébé devant la porte d’un inconnu, a créé un remarquable réseau de mensonges pour effacer cet événement insupportable. Victime de la violence et des humiliations cruelles de cet homme, John a appris dès son enfance à mentir à son père, puis, plus tard, sur son père.
John Burnside’s father was a hard man of the old school: mean, drunk, taciturn, unpredictable and physically ruthless. For years he terrorised his wife, son and daughter, and inspired a mixture of awe and contempt amongst neighbours and relations. Looking back on their relationship, Burnside tries to get a hold on who his father was by sorting out all his lies, and to come to terms with his own past and excesses: the lack of paternal approval, heavily drinking, drugs, his stay in a psychiatric hospital and his own lies about his father.
John Burnside is a Scottish novelist and poet, author of nine poetry collections including The Hoop (1988), Common Knowledge (1991), the Asylum Dance (2000) and The Hunt in the Forest (2009). He is also the author of a collection of short stories and several novels, including The Dumb House (1997), The Mercy Boys (1999), Living Nowhere (2003) and Glister (2008). John Burnside’s memoir, A Lie About My Father, was published in 2006, and the second part, Waking Up in Toytown, in 2010.
Andrew O’Hagan
- Le crépuscule des pères, Flammarion, 2000, R OHA (Our fathers, 1999)
Jamie a 10 ans lorsqu’il décide de fuir un père violent et alcoolique. Il fugue chez ses grands-parents paternels qu’il connaît peu mais qui l’accueillent à bras ouverts. Là, Jamie va découvrir la personnalité de son grand-père Hugh, homme du peuple, bâtisseur idéaliste des cités ouvrières des années 50, mais aussi père catastrophique incapable d’aimer un fils qui l’a déçu. Des années plus tard, Jim revient en Ecosse pour voir Hugh sur son lit de mort. Commence un voyage initiatique dans le passé familial qui le conduira du père aux pères.
Jamie is only 10 years old when he runs away from the difficulties and traumas of his home, problems which include alcoholism and domestic violence. He is welcomed by his grandparents and learns more about his grand father Hugh Provan, an idealistic Socialist who led Scotland’s towerblock programme after the war. Years later, Jamie comes back to Scotland when Hugh is lying on his death bed. The old man’s final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past that haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him.
- Sois près de moi, Christian Bourgois Editeur, 2008, R OHA (Be near me, 2006)
Père David Anderton, 57 ans, s’installe dans la petite ville ouvrière de Dalgarnock, en Ecosse, pour prendre en charge la paroisse. Arrivant d’Angleterre, il se heurte à l’hostilité de ses concitoyens et peine à trouver sa place dans cet univers si éloigné du sien. Il se lie néanmoins d’amitié avec son étonnante gouvernante, Mrs Poole, ainsi qu’avec deux adolescents rebelles, Lisa et Mark. Mais son amitié avec le jeune homme éveille une certaine suspicion. Père David devient alors la cible de l’hystérie collective...
David Anderton is a parish priest who moves from England to Dalgarnock, a small town in Ayrshire. Rejected by most of the local community, he is disgraced when accused of sexual assault on a teenage boy he has befriended.
Andrew O’Hagan is a writer and novelist born in Glasgow. He first joined the staff of the London Review of Books, one of the UK’s leading literary publications before publishing his first book, The Missing, in 1995. Shortlisted for three literary awards, it has been adapted for the television and the theatre. His novels, Our fathers (1999), Personality (2003), Be near me (2006) and The life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe (2010), were also well acclaimed by the critics and nominated for several awards. In 2008, he edited a new selection of Robert Burns’s poems and worked on a three part film on the poet for the BBC. In 2010, O’Hagan was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
Kenneth White
- Mahamudra, Mercure de France, 1979, 821 WHI
Le titre de cette édition bilingue est un mot sanskrit qui signifie : le grand geste. C’est insister sur la nécessité et la possibilité de sortir de tous les jeux littéraires qui ne sont que le signe d’un manque d’espace et de respiration vitale.
This bilingual edition is entitled "Mahamudra" which means "Great Seal" in Sanskrit, a reflection on the writing process.
Kenneth White is a poet and writer born near Glasgow. After studying German and French at the University of Glasgow, he went to Paris where he obtained a state doctorate. After a short return to Glasgow, he lived in different French cities before establishing himself in Brittany. He took the position of the Chair of 20th century Poetics at the Paris-Sorbonne and founded the International Institute of Geopoetics. He is an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Meaghan Delahunt
- Le livre rouge, Editions Métailié, 2011, R DEL (The Red Book, 2008)
Trois étrangers se rencontrent en Inde: Françoise, photographe australienne en reportage à Bhopal; Naga, un réfugié tibétain dont la famille est morte dans la catastrophe et Arkay, un voyageur écossais qui cherche à se libérer de la drogue grâce au bouddhisme. En souvenir du temps qu’ils ont passé ensemble, Françoise rassemble des photographies de leurs vies dans un album, le Livre rouge.
Françoise, an Australian photographer, goes to India to work on an arts project in the city of Bhopal, 20 years after the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory which killed thousands in 1984. She meets Naga, a Tibetan refugee who lost his family in the tragedy, and Arkay, a Scot embracing Buddhism to battle addiction, grief and memories of abuse. The Red Book which Françoise assembles of their time together is an album of photos that slowly develop their stories.
Meaghan Delahunt is a novelist born in Melbourne, Australia. Former Trotskyite agitator in her native country, Delahunt travelled in South East Asian countries before settling in Edinburgh in 1993. Her first novel, In the Blue House, for which she received, among many prizes, the Scottish Arts Council book of the year and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, was released in 2001. It portrayed the assumed romance between the painter Frida Kahlo and Léon Trotski. The Red Book is her second novel, written in 2008.
ENJOY!