A meeting with Cécile Wajsbrot and Josephine Rijnaarts

On Friday 6 November, join award-winning French writer Cécile Wajsbrot for a Q&A about her work, including her latest novel, Nevermore. This book was translated into Dutch by Josphine Rijnaarts, who will be joining the conversation. Wajsbrot and Rijnaarts will be awarded the Europese Literatuurprijs 2026 (European Literature Prize) for this “profoundly European, worldly novel, in a time, our times, in which destruction, mourning and devastation, are constantly in the news and yet we persist in repeating history – Nevermore, never again?”

Nevermore is a story of a woman translating the famous middle part ‘Time Passes’ from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) into French – while on a translation fellowship in Dresden, she thinks about that city’s history, the destruction of the First World War so central to Woolf’s novel, and other places of loss and memory.

Together with translator Josephine Rijnaarts, Cécile Wajsbrot will be in Amsterdam before they accept their award, on Saturday, in The Hague. Make use of this exclusive opportunity to meet her and engage in a Q&A about her novel, its themes, and the art of translation. Space is limited, so please register in advance.

The conversation will be moderated by Jesse van Amelsvoort, writer, critic, and lecturer in modern European literature at the University of Amsterdam.