Both authors, the ten young people from the "Atelier des deux rives" literary criticism training scheme have chosen to review your novels Archipels and Beirut: April 13, 1975. What was your reaction to this announcement?

Marwan Chahine: I was happy and moved to see the interest of young people, particularly on the other side of the Mediterranean. I was surprised in the positive sense of the word, because I thought the subject was a bit arduous and I hadn't imagined that this book would be chosen. So my first reaction was to be pleased and moved by the selection.

Hélène Gaudy : For me too, it was really moving and gratifying, especially as, in my case, it's a book about an aging father. These are questions I asked myself as an adult, and it's a text about memory and transmission. I was surprised and pleased that it appealed to much younger people, and I found that they were very mature in their approach to the text. They wrote literary columns about the book and I was really impressed by their literary sensibility and their sensibility in general, by the way they were able to draw out themes, to make echoes with personal experiences. What they sent back to me in their readings was extremely enriching: through their eyes, it was another way of seeing my text, of envisioning what I had wanted to put into it.

In this context, you met with the ten young people in the scheme at the Littérature Live festival (May 19-25) organized by the Villa Gillet, in Lyon. How did the exchanges go?

Marwan Chahine: I met the young people from the scheme informally, and then they were present at the discussion I myself took part in that evening. The following day, we had a more in-depth discussion during which we went back over the texts they had produced. Their texts were very relevant and it was fascinating to see them take them so seriously: it put me in a position of responsibility and reminded me that what we were doing was not trivial. We also had an exchange to discuss the written texts, and then, more generally, the writer's craft and the meaning of criticism.

Hélène Gaudy : It was a joyful and enjoyable moment, with everyone speaking up and explaining their background and relationship to books. I was confronted with young people who were really passionate about books: it was exciting to meet young people so intensely inhabited by the desire to read and write. I had the opportunity to make several trips to Tunisia and Algeria to write, which enabled me to arrive in a country trying to understand how it works and what issues young people are going through there. It was a nice twist to be in the shoes of someone who meets young people who have made the journey to come to France. There was also a lot of discussion about how you approach a country you've just arrived in, where you don't know the customs, and where you try to exchange ideas on these issues. 20 years later, I found myself in the opposite position, with very relevant and sensitive exchanges. I found a lot of acuity in the reading and echoes of personal experiences, even though we're not the same age, nor have we had the same experiences. It was an opportunity to talk about some pretty deep, intimate things that aren't necessarily easy to talk about with strangers, using the book as a vehicle to reach us on some pretty universal things.

Writing is an attention to the world, to what surrounds us, which lies in authorization, in telling ourselves that we have the right to seize all this and try to do something with it.

What have you been able to bring to these young people trained in literary criticism?

Marwan Chahine: It's funny because I really feel that they've brought me a lot, almost more than I've been able to bring them. I wanted to communicate about the writing process and what a writer's life is like. This made it possible to test certain hypotheses about the text in greater depth, most of which were relevant and others a little less so. We were able to discuss the writer's craft and, while they were delighted to be able to ask all these questions, I was equally delighted to have people who had invested so much in understanding my text.

Hélène Gaudy : I also had the impression of receiving a lot. A little later, I saw a video of a student talking about the meetings and saying that they had helped her get started, that they had encouraged her to say to herself that, finally, writing wasn't just for certain people. I was delighted to hear her say that everyone has the material within them to create a text. I'm always trying to get across at meetings the idea that writing is a process of transformation, and that it's not something that some people have and others don't. It's a way of paying attention to the world, of being aware of what's out there. It's about paying attention to the world, to what surrounds us, and it's about authorization, about telling ourselves that we have the right to seize all that and try to do something with it.

The translation is important to me because it's strange to talk about Lebanon only in French when it's one of the country's non-majority languages.

For your part, Marwan, you also took part in a meeting entitled "Regards croisés sur le Liban: enquête, poésie et mémoire" with Anthony Samrani and Hyam Yared. What were the main themes of these discussions?

Marwan Chahine : When we talk about literature in Lebanon, it's always difficult to separate it from the country's tragic current events. The discussion focused a lot on the power of words, asking what stories can do in the face of war. The findings weren't necessarily very optimistic, but we were able to sketch out certain avenues, and in particular the fact that it was essential to produce alternative narratives and other ways of seeing the world in a place where warlike discourses predominate.

As for you, Hélène, you also took part in a meeting called "Mémoires des lieux, traces et transmissions" alongside Esther Kinsky. Do you have any highlights from this exchange to share?

Hélène Gaudy : I was very happy to meet Esther Kinsky because she's someone I've been reading for a long time and really met through her books. It's always very curious to meet a writer whom you admire, whom you've read a lot because, all of a sudden, all the landscapes, all the ideas you've shared, come together in this person who's in front of you and with whom you have to renew a dialogue that's completely different from the dialogue you have when reading. The exchange was very friendly and very rich: there were many points in common in his books and in particular this idea of enclosed places that call for many other places opening doors to many possible elsewhere.

Finally, how important is translation to you? Is it a goal to see your works published in other languages?

Marwan Chahine: It's something that's important to me because it's strange to talk about Lebanon only in French when it's one of the country's non-majority languages. Most of the people I talk about in the book haven't had access to it, and I can't wait for it to be translated into English and especially Arabic. In Arabic, there's a process underway with "Livres des deux rives", so we'll see what happens, and in English, there are a few discussions, but nothing concrete. It's something that's important to me because I'd like this story to be decompartmentalized: there was also the idea of producing another way of understanding the civil war in general and, as a result, translation is an important point even if I imagine it's going to be a bit complicated with a hybrid genre, halfway between journalism and literature.

Hélène Gaudy : There's perhaps less of a relationship with a particular language than in Marwan's case, but it's true that I always want books to travel. It's something that allows the book to have a longer life, to move around and, on a personal level, I find it fascinating to receive your book in a language you don't understand. Thanks to translation, the book passes through the filter of another sensibility, another writing, and the fact that it comes back to us in an incomprehensible form is something that always amazes me.

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