Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/08/2015
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
oxford book store
Categories
Sébastien Ortiz was born in France in 1972. As a teenager, he started to show a great interest in literature and travels. After 1991, he went very often to Asia. He stayed in particular in Taiwan and in India (Kolkata). After studies in political science and Chinese, he entered the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1996. From 1999 to 2002, he worked as First Secretary in the French Embassy in Indonesia. In September 2002, he published his first novel, « Tâleb » (Gallimard publishing house). The book was very well received both by the critics and the public. It was shortlisted for about ten book awards, including the famous Médicis and Femina prizes. Sébastien Ortiz published his second novel, “Mademoiselle Coeur Solitaire” (Miss Lonely Hearts, Gallimard) in 2005. “Fantômes à Calcutta” (Ghosts in Calcutta, 2009) is his third novel. In 2012, he publishes « Burmese Portraits – Nineteen Views of the Swhedagon », some short stories based upon his own experience of Burma, where he lived from 2008 to 2012 and worked as Cooperation and Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of France and director of the French Institute of Myanmar. His books were translated in four different countries. He also edited one essay on Bali (“Le gout de Bali”, The Taste of Bali, 2005). He participated in a collective anthology of prefaces (“Collection irraisonnée de prefaces à des livres fétiches”, Irrational collection of prefaces to fetish books, 2009), a collection of texts on jazz (« My Favourite Things – Around the Jazz in 80 Writers », 2013) and an anthology of travel writers (« Babel », 2013).
Sébastien Ortiz now lives in India and works as Consul General of France in Kolkata. He has many ideas for future books : he just has to find enough time and energy to put them in hand !
ON PERSONAL INVITATION ONLY
