Jean Rolin

Jean Rolin is a writer and a journalist. The majority of his books focus on his perambulations in both time and space, which he expresses with a precise voice that pays great attention to individuals he has come across and to political turbulences. Often the narrator appears to be offset, foreign to what he encounters and void of grander allusions of himself – from adopting the viewpoint of the secret agent who wanders by foot Los Angeles in Le Ravissement de Britney Spears [The Rapture of Britney Spears] to that of the disoriented voyager recording the acts and traces of dubious persons in Ormuz or Le Traquet Kurde [The Kurdish Wheatear].

A bird discovered two centuries ago, recently dubbed the Kurdish Wheatear, forms the binding thread of his last book. This thread, tying together vastly distant geographies extending from the mountains of Northern Iraq or Eastern Turkey, the natural habitat of the bird, to the Puy de Dôme in Central France where it inexplicably appeared in May 2015, binds in turn one century to the next, the origins of Saudi Arabia to contemporary Kurdistan and the diverse representatives of the British Empire to the skeptical narrator who produces a stunning diagram of these officials’ active falsifications, be they ornithological or political.

Please note that the reading will be held in French.
reserve a place at education@beirutartcenter.org