Hélène Laurain: Until everything burns - Bilingual reading and discussion with Clémentine Abel

Laetitia was born three minutes before her twin sister and thirty-seven minutes before the Chernobyl explosion. She is obsessed with the climate catastrophe and horrified by the plan to bury radioactive waste in her native Lorraine. Together with her friends, she stages a spectacular coup.

Hélène Laurain portrays her protagonist not only as an activist, but also as the daughter of a mother who recently died of cancer and a father who threw her out the door. She loves an unstable man, lives with another man, has had an abortion. She was a model student, has a doctorate, only to find herself working at the Snowhall in Thermes-les-Bains, an artificial leisure paradise. In "Bis alles brennt" (Voland & Quist, 2024, translated by Isabel Kupski), the portrait of a generation in the fight against climate change is pieced together like a mosaic with the image of the narrator. Translation: Florence Dancoisne (CCFF).
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Photo: © Alexander Abdelilah

Co-organizer: Centre Culturel Français Freiburg (CCFF), Frankreichzentrum der University campus Freiburg

Date: 3.6.2025, 7 pm
Venue: Centre Culturel Français, Münsterplatz 11
Admission: 11/7 euros

Reading and discussion
Outside the house