Literature

The Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes already holds the memory of Avignon’s great nights. In 2026, Maldoror adds the promise of a dizzying stage experience. Credit: Jialiang Gao / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.

Culture

Julien Gosselin brings Maldoror to Avignon with five hours of theater, film and literary darkness onstage

2026-06-30

Donald Trump bursts from a manga-style panel in a humorous illustration created to evoke the controversy without reproducing Naruto or Yu-Gi-Oh!. Image generated by artificial intelligence by Ecostylia Media. Credits: Ecostylia Media.

Society

Why Japan’s Trump manga petition turns Naruto-style posts into a copyright and soft-power flashpoint in 2026

2026-06-10

Leïla Slimani at the Fronteiras do Pensamento series in São Paulo, June 2018. The novelist already appears as a public voice, between literature, cultural policy, and social debate. Credits: Fronteiras do Pensamento / Greg Salibian, via Wikimedia Commons.

Culture

At France’s national theater, Jolly and Slimani signal a Comédie-Française season built for public transition

2026-06-10

Marjane Satrapi at Cannes in 2008, when Persepolis had already made her an international figure in animated cinema. The portrait accompanies the tribute to a free artist. Credit: Georges Bird / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Culture

After Marjane Satrapi’s death, tributes revisit Persepolis, exile and her voice for Iranian women’s freedom

2026-06-05

Lambert Wilson at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2016, showing the calm precision of an actor used to major events. His name is now circulating around Nicolas Flamel, a possible French bridge to the new Harry Potter series. Credit: Georges Biard / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Culture

In HBO’s Harry Potter series, Lambert Wilson points to Nicolas Flamel before any official studio confirmation

2026-06-04

Boualem Sansal poses at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2011, a calm figure before a trajectory that became highly political. Credits: Lesekreis / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.

Culture

After Algeria detention, Boualem Sansal returns with La Légende as French publishing fractures around Grasset

2026-06-02

Virginie Despentes emerges here as one of the most visible faces of the Grasset affair after a video that hardened the public tone of the protest. Her words do not summarize the crisis, but they give it new reach by linking Olivier Nora’s departure to a direct critique of power in publishing. The image thus accompanies the shift from an internal crisis to a wider debate about editorial independence.

Culture

How the French novelist turned the Grasset upheaval into a wider fight over editorial independence

2026-04-23

Culture

The announced sentence against Kamel Daoud revives a dispute over fiction, Algerian justice and war memory

2026-04-22

In Angoulême, crowds move through festival installations among streets, tents, and the familiar facades of the city’s big event. The scene shows that comics spill beyond the professional sphere to permeate the whole city. At a time of governance change, the image measures what is at stake for a cultural and popular institution.

Culture

After boycott and legal strife, Angoulême’s comics festival tries to pull its fractured industry together

2026-04-22

This view, taken at a previous edition, captures the rhythm of the Paris Book Festival. It shows how the event mixes the public with professionals. As the Grasset affair dominates discussions, the festival becomes the space where collective unease becomes visible.

Culture

At the Paris Book Festival, Olivier Nora’s ouster fuels fears over publishing pluralism

2026-04-17

Culture

António Lobo Antunes, major Portuguese novelist, dies at 83

2026-03-06

Portrait of Damian Lewis, British actor. In Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, he lends his voice to George Orwell’s writings and journals. The film draws on these texts to revisit the genesis of 1984. The voice thus becomes a central vehicle in the narrative device imagined by Raoul Peck.

Culture

Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 by Raoul Peck – rereading Orwell against Newspeak

2026-02-25