The insatiable "gluttony" of a literary agent named Pierre Astier
Audio 04:25
From left to right: Abdoulaye Fodé Ndione, Pierre Astier, Sylvie Marcé, Hamidou Konaté, first guests of VMDN on the occasion of The literary re-entry of Mali Credits Baptiste Antoine
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
12 mins
Literary agent is a profession still little known to the general public in France.
And yet it plays an increasingly essential role in the world of books, and has established itself as an essential intermediary between the publisher and the author.
This is the profession that Astier-Pécher Literary and Film Agency has been carrying out with some success for almost fifteen years, specializing in the French-speaking world and world literature and crowned the best international literary agent.
Portrait of its founder, Pierre Astier, the man who revealed Alain Mabanckou and some other great feathers of contemporary African letters.
Publicity
“
I have come to realize year after year how much literature is needed. Words are always subversive. There is always something in the novels in the essays which makes you think, which can disturb and modify our look. This is the great value of literature.
So says Pierre Astier, a key figure in the world of French publishing. Tireless defender of literatures from here and elsewhere, the man introduced French readers to postcolonial African literatures, but also novels from Cuba or Japan, which speak, in Astier's words, to "
l 'modern, mobile and multicultural man
'.
For a long time collection director and publisher, Pierre Astier now heads the Astier-Pécher Literary and Film Agency, one of the most renowned literary agencies located in the heart of Paris. Sacred best international literary agent at the London Book Fair two years ago, this agency represents more than 80 authors including Hervé Le Tellier, author of
L'Anomalie
, Goncourt Prize 2020. A true literary phenomenon, this philosophical novel and “
Oulipien
” has sold more than a million copies, a threshold rarely reached by a novel in France. The agent's talent scouting qualities and their development is probably no stranger to this success.
Among the other best-selling authors in Astier-Pécher's portfolio, we must mention the French Jean-Christophe Rufin, the Chinese Mo Yan, the Hungarian Agota Kristof, the Algerian Yasmina Khadra or the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong ' o, to name just a few. When asked if he has a recipe, Pierre Astier likes to recall that the profession of literary agent is a profession of "
matchmaker
", which has long aroused resistance in France.
Explanation of text by the person concerned: “
There is hardly any recipe, but a lot of work.
We especially endured a form of adversity when we settled down, since the literary agency was not taken for granted fifteen years ago.
Today, I am happy to see that no one has any doubts about the interest that this profession exists in France.
The literary agent is someone who has multiple experience, who knows the inner workings of publishing.
Me, I always rejoice when I bring a text and its author to the right publisher, the one who would be better able to read the work well and then edit it well and finally sell it.
We're a bit of a dating agency.
When the marriage between author and publisher goes according to plan, we are happy.
"
Voices from the outskirts
At the end of the 1980s, Pierre Astier had made a name for himself by creating the publishing house Le Serpent à plumes, which marked the imagination.
Le Serpent à plumes
was first and foremost a magazine of short stories, prestigious for its cosmopolitan signatures and original in its form: loose bundles of ten times four pages gathered in a plastic sleeve. Inspired by American and English magazines,
Le Serpent à plumes
was
Granta magazine
for the French-speaking world.
In 1993, under the auspices of the pre-Columbian divinity from whom the magazine took its name,
Le Serpent à plumes
was transformed into a publishing house, with the ambition of making voices heard from continents and emerging countries. The tone was set from the first books:
La grande drive des spirits,
the second novel by Guadeloupean Gisèle Pineau and
The dream of a childhood photo,
a collection of seven short stories from the pen of the Haitian writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert. Far from being accidental, these choices were dictated by the publisher's concern to shake up French literature by fertilizing it by writers from the "
periphery
", the West Indies, Africa and the Indian Ocean.
“
The emergence outside of Europe of literatures in European languages is one of the fundamental factors of the nineties,
” proclaimed Pierre Astier at the launch of his publishing house. And to explain: “
It is the logical continuation of the process of imposition of our languages under other skies for two centuries in favor of colonization. The languages of old Europe have traveled, they have been colonized in their turn. Today, they come back to us in the form of literary texts.
"
During its ten years of existence as an independent house, before being acquired by a large group in 2004, Le Serpent à plumes has developed a catalog of nearly 400 titles, featuring prestigious international authors such as Timothy Findley, John Cheever, Natsume Soseki, John Coetzee, Dany Laferrière, Nuruddin Farah, as well as collections of essays, detective literature and a collection of pockets.
In the eyes of specialists in the French publishing world, one of the main achievements of the Serpent's editorial team was to introduce a new generation of French-speaking African writers: the Djiboutian Abdourahman Waberi, the Congolese Alain Mabanckou, the Malagasy Raharimanana, the Beninese Florent Couao-Zotti, writers who have since become leaders of a literary Africa in full effervescence and renewal. Back to the editorial context of the time with Pierre Astier: “
Twenty-five years ago, there was L'Harmattan, there was Présence Africaine and a few authors who could be read at Le Seuil or at Plon.
The French edition has gradually opened up to these authors who were then called "authors of the French-speaking periphery", a term which today has no meaning because the whole ecosystem has changed.
It is easier today when you are an author coming from Port-au-Prince or Dakar to hope to be published in Paris or in a French house.
"
A tireless curiosity
Having moved to Paris from his native Annecy as a teenager, Pierre Astier has led a professional life for forty years entirely dedicated to the discovery of new literary talents. Curiosity is perhaps the virtue that best characterizes his approach. Hence the slogan that adorns the opening page of his agency's website: “
A relentless curiosity for literatures from the whole world
”, or “
An indefatigable curiosity for literatures from around the world
”. A curiosity that the interested party describes as "
gluttony
". "
I have always had a lot of curiosities for other writings, for other literatures
," says Pierre Astier.
This curiosity for the world is reflected in our choices of the works that we represent as a literary agent and in the choices that I made a few years ago as an editor at Le Serpent à Plumes.
I am greedy for the whole world.
"
It will be understood: in the world of literary agents, gluttony is not a bad fault.
On the contrary.
The Astier-Pécher team cultivates it to better find talent.
These talents are called Hervé Le Tellier, or even Blaise Ndala whose novel
Dans le belly du Congo
is one of the recent arrivals particularly noted in the field of "
world literature
".
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