Frédéric Pajak, writing and drawing the world

Audio 29:00

Frédéric Pajak, writer and designer, in studio at RFI (September 2020).

© RFI / Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

31 min

Frédéric Pajak, born in 1955, is a writer and designer.

Since 2012, he is the author of a work entitled "The uncertain manifesto", of which he has just published the 9th and final volume at Éditions Noir sur Blanc.

This volume, between autobiography and biography, is dedicated to the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and was selected for the Renaudot Essay Prize 2020.

Publicity

Cover of the Uncertain Manifesto vol.

9 © Black on White

"It's a kind of miracle if we were able to unearth the writings of Fernando Pessoa, found in a trunk. Now one of the most famous writers of his century, Pessoa had hardly been published during his lifetime. In this ninth and final uncertain Manifesto, we witness the emergence, not only of the Portuguese poet himself, but of his main “heteronyms” Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Bernardo Soares, of which he had carefully created the work and the biography. We discover him in South Africa, during his youth, then in Lisbon in the guise of a modest office worker. But who is hiding behind this dull and effaced character, who has never known only one love, platonic and unhappy?

Leaving biographical mode, the author also takes us on his own adventures, in the Sahara, in the United States, in People's China and in various European countries.

Uniting distinct voices, this last Uncertain Manifesto explores biography and autobiography, narration and introspection, dreams and realities, in a deliberately labyrinthine narrative punctuated by more than two hundred drawings. "

(Presentation of the Noir Sur Blanc editions)

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