Who is Dany Laferrière
Learn more about Haitian-Canadian author Dany Laferrière, a special guest at the Institut français this month.
Dany Laferrière was born in april 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and grew up in Petit-Goâve. He starts his career as a journalist in Haiti until his friend and fellow journalist Gasner Raymond is assassinated by the paramilitary militia. Fearing for his own life, he decides to leave the country and moves to Montreal where he will publish his first book How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired with Douglas & McIntyre in 1985. The book is a huge success worldwide, translated in many languages and adapted for the cinema by Canadian director Jacques W. Benoit. He then becomes one of the representative figures of a whole new generation of writers in Quebec.
He continues his writing career publishing Eroshima, An Aroma of Coffee, Dining with the Dictator and many more. He has published half a dozen books since 2005 with Editions du Boréal in Canada and Editions Grasset in France, including The Enigma of the Return (original title: L'énigme du Retour) which met with large-scale success and won the Prix Médicis.
Dany Laferrière keeps on with his journalist career, working for television and radio. He also acquires a taste for cinema after working on the adaptation of its books How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired and Dining with the Dictator. He helps creating the movie Vers le sud by Laurent Cantet staring Charlotte Rampling and will later write and direct his first movie How to Conquer America in One Night.
In January 2010, the magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes Haiti while Dany Laferrière is at Port-au-Prince. As the television shows a devastated country through collapsed buildings and a rising number of deaths, Dany will write on his 'calepin noir' (black notebook) and tell the everyday life of a broken country and its inhabitants after this catastrophe. The notebook will be published as the book Tout bouge autour de moi (The World is Moving Around Me).
Dany Laferrière is elected at the Académie française on 12 December 2013 and is received officially on 28 May 2015. He is also appointed officer of the National Order of Quebec and was awarded the Order of Canada with the grade of officer in 2015.
Dany Laferrière will be at the Institut français for a special talk on 24 September, followed by a jazz creole live music session. More information and bookings here.
Also on 24 September, the French Caribbean culture and literature will be celebrated at the British Library with a day of talks, reflection and discussion. More information here.
Discover some of his books:
English translation by David Homel The Return, 2011 (MacLehose Press)
Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer, 1985 (Éditions VLB)
English translation by David Homel How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (Douglas & MacIntyre)
Éroshima, 1987 (Éditions VLB)
English translation by David Homel Eroshima, 1991 (Coach House Press)
L'odeur du café, 1991 (Éditions VLB)
English translation by David Homel An Aroma of Coffee, 1995 (Coach House Press)
Le goût des jeunes filles, 1992 (Éditions VLB)
English translation by David Homel Dining with the Dictator, 1994 (Coach House Press)
Je suis un écrivain japonais
English translation by David Homel I Am a Japanese Writer, 2010 (Douglas & McIntyre)
Tout bouge autour de moi, 2010 (Mémoire d'encrier)
English translation by David Homel The World is Moving Around Me, 2013 (Arsenal Pulp Press)
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