Welcome to an evening at Mint, dedicated to the writer Hervé Guibert. Three contemporary Swedish writers, critics and translators – Eli Levén, Hanna Johansson and Mathias Westin – take a look at Guibert’s versatile practice. The participants read partly from Guibert’s texts, partly from their own texts that engage with Guibert’s writing, approaching the authorship from different angles and opening it up for interpretation.
In recent years, several books have been published based on the life and work of the French writer, critic, filmmaker and photographer Hervé Guibert (1955–1991). In Sweden, his writing has reached a new generation thanks to the reissues of To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life and Blindsight, and his perspective on memory and transience, obsession, illness and sexuality, as well as his distinctive voice – which gives the reader a rare strong illusion of closeness and familiarity – has, since his untimely death in 1991, never ceased to captivate.
The evening takes place in Polys Peslika’s ongoing exhibition Young Predictions at Mint (11.4 – 15.6, 2024) .
The event is free and does not require advance registration. In Swedish.
With:
Eli Levén is the author of the novels Du är rötterna som sover vid mina fötter och håller jorden på plats and Hur jag skulle vilja försvinna, as well as critic and filmmaker. He has written the foreword to Norstedt’s new edition of Blindsight, 2021.
Hanna Johansson is the author of the novel Antiquity as well as a critic and art editor at SvD. She has written about Hervé Guibert in, among other things, SvD’s Under Strecket (“The art of getting to know a dead stranger”, 2023).
Mathias Westin is a psychologist and translator. Among other things, he is working on a translation of Hervé Guibert’s novel Le protocole compassionnel, 1991.