Writers' Monday with Jean-Pierre Montal
The latest winner of the Prix des Deux Magots 2024, Jean-Pierre Montal, will be the first guest of the Lundi des Ecrivains season, on Monday October 21 at 6.30pm.
Le Lundi des Ecrivains is the monthly literary event we organize at Les Deux Magots: one Monday a month at 6.30pm, a leading author presents his or her latest work to a privileged audience.
In an intimate setting conducive to confidence, we also discuss the rest of his work, his inspirations and influences, the birth of his passion for literature, and his writing methods.
On October 21, Jean-Pierre Montal will present La Face nord, for which he has just won the Prix des Deux Magots. In this novel, the author recounts the meeting of a man and a woman after a screening of Leo McCarey’s masterpiece Elle et lui. Their passion for the film is the starting point for a love story that is both obvious and intense. But she’s seventy-two and he’s forty-eight. Is it possible to ignore such a gap? Is it possible to start all over again?
Born in 1971, Jean-Pierre Montal is a novelist and publisher. Co-founder of Editions Rue Fromentin, he has published authors such as Madeline Miller(Circé, Le Chant d’Achille), J. Courtney Sullivan(Les Débutantes), Meg Wolitzer(Les Intéressants) and Patrice Jean’s first novels (including L’Homme surnuméraire). Today, at Cherche Midi, he is the editor of Reiner Stach’s Kafka ( Les Inrockuptibles 2023 essay prize) and the biography Robert Oppenheimer, triomphe et tragédie d’un génie, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which inspired Christopher Nolan’s film. The North Face is his fifth novel. It follows La Nuit du 5-7 and Leur chamade (Prix Jean-René Huguenin 2023), both also published by Editions Séguier.