Inaugurated yesterday, the Book Festival will bring together over 200 novelists, essayists, poets, and polemicists until Sunday for this 21st edition.
Signings, debates, meetings, activities, and readings will punctuate these days of exchanges, discussions, and wonderful discoveries for the delight of book enthusiasts, the lovers of reading.
If the weather doesn’t spoil the event like it did yesterday afternoon right after the official speeches and the awarding of the Baie des Anges Prize, around 50,000 loyal attendees are expected at this highlight of the cultural program.
Chaired (“I am just the spokesperson,” he declared) by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, also the artistic director (“just a figurehead,” he clarified, decidedly in good spirits), the jury chose Akli Tadjer and his novel “La Reine du Tango” to award him the 2016 Baie des Anges Literary Prize.
The winner did not hide his satisfaction: “a prize? Everyone dreams of it, but only one gets it.”
The final word comes from the honorary president (and successful writer himself) Jean-Christophe Rufin: “there is no civilization without culture. Literature is the permanent reference point of culture. We must be there to support it.”
