Franck Pavloff, in Estonia in the footsteps of the ghosts of the past

Audio 29:00

The writer Franck Pavloff in the studio at RFI (February 2022).

© Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint/RFI

By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

1 min

Franck Pavloff, a French writer of Bulgarian origin, is the author of "Brown Morning", a short story that has become cult, republished and illustrated by C215, but also a demanding novel.

He was awarded the Prix France Télévisions in 2005 for "Le Pont de Ran-Mositar", Prix des Grands Espaces in 2009 for Le Grand Exil, Prix Lettres Frontière in 2012 for "The man with the build of a bear".

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Hope is my country © Albin Michel

"In the train that takes him to Narva, in the north-west of Estonia, the genealogist Stig Nyman, dispatched from Stockholm, hopes to find the trace of a certain Toomas Luutos. Born in this same city in 1918, this collector and genius forger left a substantial legacy, and only an estate search will tell if he has any descendants.

By delving into his genealogy, Nyman discovers the tormented history of a country which was one of the battlegrounds of the 20th century, passed from the Nazi yoke to Soviet domination, a territory with a fluctuating identity and porous borders, whose legacy weighs as much as that of a father to his children, even beyond death.

We find the deep themes of the work of Franck Pavloff in this novel-investigation on the borders of the Baltic, a fascinating journey with the ghosts of the past towards brilliant suns."

(Presentation

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Franck Pavloff, on the thread of a story