A Conversation with Line Papin, Novelist
Date and Time
Oct 2, 2023 7:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Oct 2, 2023 7:00 pm
450K
Join us for a special conversation with award-winning French Vietnamese novelist Line Papin as she discusses her new book, The Girl Before Her, a coming-of-age tale of dislocation and inherited trauma. Told in three parts, The Girl Before Her moves from a small farming village in Vietnam to France and back again to tell the story of three generations of women as they confront themselves and one another through war, marriage and immigration. This book offers a window into the existential anguish of displacement as experienced by a child on the cusp of becoming a woman during the Vietnam War and her later life in France, grappling with who she is and where she belongs. Part meditation, part family history, part message in a bottle to her younger selves, Papin’s lyrical work of autofiction explores what it takes to embrace one’s multiracial, transnational self by making peace with the generations of women who’ve come before.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen praises The Girl Before Her: “A fable, a dream, a nightmare, Line Papin’s sharp little book fits like a wedge between the ribs.
PROGRAM
BOOK TALK WITH LINE PAPIN QUESTIONS & ANSWERS WITH AUDIENCE
BOOK SIGNING
Born in HaÌ€ Ná»Ì‚i, LINE PAPIN moved to France at the age of ten. She is the author of five critically acclaimed novels: L’eÌveil (2016, Winner of the Vocation Prize), Toni (2018), Les os des filles (2019, Winner of the Readers’ Prize of Le Livre de Poche), Le coeur en laisse (2021), and Une vie possible (2022). She lives and writes in Paris.
May 27, 2026 4:30 pm
