Author(s): Julia Kerninon (Author) , Ruth Diver (Translated by)

Literature | Les Fugitives

'The best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood,' Hemingway famously said. Julia Kerninon, one of France's most acclaimed young novelists, tells an altogether different story in a poetic account of her pursuit. Her vibrant ode to reading, and to writing as a space for discovery (as well as a 'respectable occupation') entwines the French and Anglo-Saxon literary traditions as she journeys fluidly through her formative years. From her native Brittany to the city of Shakespeare and Company, to a seaside cafe on the Atlantic coast, to Budapest and back, the author conjures a feminine answer to A Moveable Feast.

Review: 'The greatest writers are also the greatest readers. Virginia Woolf, Roland Barthes, Jeanette Winterson - they all read, as Woolf put it, 'to refresh and exercise [their] own creative powers.' They can't stop themselves from writing about reading. They have origin stories of how reading and writing became as necessary as breathing. Julia Kerninon's A Respectable Occupation joins the shelf of these biblioautobiographies; books on how writers crave books, how books beget books, how tricky it is to move from the position of the reader to that of the writer, and stand there feeling you've earned the right to call yourself, finally, a writer.' - Lauren Elkin 'Marvellously contagious' - Le Point 'Julia Kerninon has all the makings of an icon,' Nathalie Azoulai, Marianne 'She has already made her presence felt as one of France's most promising writers,'Jade Laurent, L'Express 'Julia Kerninon is a huge talent,' Jeanne de Menibus, ELLE (France)

Author Biography: Julia Kerninon's first novel, Buvard, has won the Prix Francoise Sagan, among many other awards. Kerninon's second novel, Le dernier amour d'Attila Kiss, won the Prix de la Closerie des Lilas in 2016, and her latest novel, My Devotion, winner of the 2018 Feneon Literary Prize, is published by Europa Editions in July 2020. Her PhD thesis on The Paris Review will be published in France later this year.

Promotional Information: A pocket-sized ode to writing by one of France's most notable new voices. Preface by award-winning author and translator Lauren Elkin (author of Flaneuse: Women Walk the City, Chatto & Windus, BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week) The answer to Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast, from an up-and-coming French female voice aged 30, whose latest novel is coming out in English published by Europa Editions. Infused with a love of literature, the book is a celebration of exchange between Francophone and Anglophone cultures past and present: a book for writers and all book lovers. A portrait of the working-class artist by an award-winning European and Anglophile writer. There will be an online video interview of the author, promoted in collaboration with the European Literature Network and the French Institute sales in France are 8,000-10,000 (tbc)