Bookshelf

Vladimir Dimitrijević, Jean-Louis Kuffer: "Personne déplacée. Entretiens", L'Age d'Homme, 1986

Il faut relire, aujourd'hui, le beau portrait que Jean-Louis Kuffer a fait, en 1986, de Vladimir Dimitrijević dans "Personne déplacée", car il n'a pas pris une ride.

Roman de formation et d'aventure, carnets d'un grand leacteur, écrit dans l'étroite dostance qui permet l'amitiée, c'est le protrait fidèle d'un éditeur hors norme, fondateur des Editions l'Age d'Homme, qui, en 40 ans d'existence, aurons publié près de 4 000 titres dans les domaines les plus divers: le monde slave, classique et contemporain, représenté environ le quart du catalogue. La Suisse, bien évidemment, constitue le fonds même du travail de la maision, avec quelque 1 500 titres traitant de tous les aspects de la culture hélvetique: littérature, histoire, sociologie, philosophie, théâtre, cinéma.

Vingt ans plus tard, il vaut la peine de revenir sur le parcours d'un homme - éditeur avant tout - qui aura poursuivi, contre vents et marées, sa vocation de passeur et dont le devise, malgré les tempêtes de l'histoire, est restée inchanée: une ouverture sur le monde.

Une alliance indestructible, texte de Jean-Louis Kuffer, actualise et justifie la présente réédition.

Jean-Michel Olivier

Lecteur infatigable, journaliste, écrivain, Jean-Louis Kuffer est né en 1947 à Lausanne. Il est l'auteur d'une douzaine d'ouvrages dont Les Bonnes dames (2006) et Impressions d'un lecteur à Lausanne (2007), publiés chez Bernard Campiche. Depuis 1982, il anime également la revue littéraire Le Passe-Muraille. De Jean-Louis Kuffer, Poche Suisse a publié Le Pain de Coucou (Prix Schiller 1984).  

About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

Events
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A new book by the Geneva-based Slavist Jean-Philippe Jaccard and his Russian colleague Andrei Ustinov, now living in San Francisco, has been published by the European University at St Petersburg: Vzir Zaumi. Daniil Harms and the Literary Avant-Garde of the 1920s. In the authors' own words, the volume offers a kind of X-ray of Leningrad's "left-wing " circles and their evolution during the period between Harms's poetic debut and the creation of OBERIU, as well as the dynamics that shaped those circles.

A few days ago, the Lausanne-based publisher Éditions Noir sur Blanc brought out Guzel Yakhina’s novel about the celebrated Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. French readers will be able to read it in Maud Mabillard’s translation and, importantly, in full, including the ninth chapter omitted from the Russian edition.