French author and globe trotter Patrick Deville curating mesmeric realities in his works

Oxford Bookstore in association with The Embassy of France / The French Institute in India and the Alliance Française du Bengalehosted a soirée and literary symposium featuring distinguished French author and globe trotter Mr. Patrick Deville.
Mr. Deville, currently on a visit to Kolkata for his upcoming French book on India was engaged in a freewheeling conversation with eminent author, translator and publisher, Dr. Sunandan Roy Chowdhury on how travel inspires literature.
In his works, Mr. Deville tours the world with his writer’s quill and shares stories from around the globe. For his book on India, the celebrated French author is travelling to Delhi, Hyderabad, Kerala and of course is now in Kolkata!
At the iconic Oxford Bookstore Park Street, Mr. Deville took the literary gathering including the Francophiles of Kolkata, travel enthusiasts and bibliophiles on a vicarious journey of the city of joy. The session witnessed the celebrated author spill the beans about his upcoming French book on India which would be published by Le seuil.
The visit to Kolkata saw Mr. Deville visit Tagore House, Victoria Memorial, Netaji Bhawan and Satyajit Ray’s Birth Centenary Celebration Exhibition. The explorer in Mr. Deville was enamoured by his visit to Kumartuli, the neighbourhood of potters in Kolkata where the artisans make Durga idols. The author also took a Hooghly river cruise and was fascinated by the glimpse of the former European Settlements and reached Chandernagore, which was established as a French colony in 1673.
Mr. Deville is known in the literary world for curating mesmeric realities in his works, often inspired by his extensive travel expeditions all across the globe. He was to visit India during this time to attend the New Delhi World Book Fair. Though the Book Fair got postponed, Mr. Deville was still eager to take forward his journey to India.
He specifically revolves his literary pieces around the colonial time frame with a dash of reality often portrayed in his choice of characters, infused with intricate travel documentation. In one of his most famous works, Peste et Cholera (2012), a fictional biography of the Swiss-French doctor, Alexandre Yersin, he perfectly encapsulates the aforementioned narrative as he explores Yersin’s journey of discovering the bacillus bacteria, which had led to the Bubonic plague. Patrick Deville, hence, transposes his readers to a different timeline as he creates a juxtaposition of the character’s medical research and his detailed travel accounts. His work has received numerous accolades including, the prestigious Prix Femina Award in 2012.
After graduating with comparative literature and philosophy, he served as the French Cultural Attaché at the young age of 23 and debuted in the literary world in 1987. He is now the author of twelve renowned travel historical fictions. His work, Kampuchea, was also conferred the best French Novel by Lire Magazine in the year 2011. He also heads the Maison des écrivainsétrangers et traducteurs (MEET – The House of Foreign Authors and Translators) in Saint-Nazaire.
Sunandan Roy Chowdhury (b.1969) is a poet, translator, publisher and academic. His most accomplished work is an English translation of Banalata Sen, a book of poetry by Jibanananda Das, the most important Bengali/Indian poet since Rabindranath Tagore.
He has translated Scandinavian literature into Bengali and during his Translators’ House Wales residency in January 2013, will be working on a translation of O! Tyn y Gorchudd by Angharad Price (Rebeka jones erkatha).
Chupnagar, his first collection of Bengali poems was published in 2012. He writes both in Bengali and English. His poetry has been published in English (The Brown Critique, Delhi and Knot, USA), Finnish (Suomi PEN, Helsinki) and Slovene (Sodobnost, Ljubljana).
A student of history in Presidency College, Calcutta and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Sunandan holds a doctorate in education, with specialization in Indian higher education policy, from Delhi University. A past fellow of Open Society Institute, Budapest, he has lectured on contemporary India and Europe in universities and institutions in global south and north. He has authored Campus Nation: Student Activism and Social Change in Slovenia, Poland, India and Bangladesh (Worldview, Calcutta, 2006) and was co-editor of Islam and Tolerance in Wider Europe, (CEU Press, New York, 2006). Sunandan has written for Mainstream (New Delhi), Ha’artez (Jerusalem), DagensNyheter (Stockholm), Mint (Mumbai), FT.com, and Matrubhumi (Kozhikode).