Evening with Constance Debré

The novel Love Me Tender by Constance Debré is one of the most monumental literary works of the past few years which received excellent reviews in most of the world’s media publications. It is a small, yet profoundly eye-opening work, written in the clear language of punk asceticism. Even though it deals with the ever-present themes, such as love, loss and survival, it addresses them in completely new ways. Constance Debré’s bourgeois biography could have been summed up as: the granddaughter of the first French post-war prime minister finished her law degree, became a successful lawyer, got married and gave birth to a son. However, this life, that seems organised at a first glance, but immensely boring at a second one, becomes unbearable for her. When she was forty-three, she divorced, ended her attorney career, cut her hair, became a writer and started living as a lesbian. What becomes of a woman who no longer adheres to societal norms and bourgeois expectations? How quickly is she pushed from the centre of society to its outskirts? What does she have to lose? The answer is everything, including her child, as the narrator’s former husband convinces the court that, under the new life circumstances, she is no longer an adequate mother. The conversation with the author will be moderated by Manca G. Renko, editor-in-chief of the No!Press publishing house. Recently, the novel Play Boy was published in translation by Iztok Ilc, under the ŠKUC publishing house.

In English with available Slovene translation.

ORGANISATION AND PRODUCTION: CITY OF WOMEN, NO! PRESS, IN COLLABORATION WITH BUNKER- OLD POWER STATION - ELEKTRO LJUBLJANA; SUPPORTED BY: INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE SLOVÉNIE, LJUBLJANA UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE.