Meeting with Jonathan Coe - VILLA-GILLET // LA VILLA TOUTE L'ANNÉE //

The Villa Gillet

Founded in 1987, the Villa Gillet welcomes in Lyon fiction and non-fiction writers, artists and scholars from over the world to ponder issues relevant to our ever shiflting world. The Villa Gillet makes the work of exciting contemporary thinkers accessible to the largest audience possible, by organizing events during the year, and during its festivals : the International Forum on the Novel — happening every year in May since 2007— co-organized with "Le Monde", Walls and Bridges, a ten-day series of events that happened from 2011 to 2013 and Mode d'emploi : un festival des idées — a festival of public debates — initiated in 2012.

Meeting with Jonathan Coe

02/13/2014 >  19:30 - 21:30
Institution des Chartreux
58, rue Pierre Dupont
LYON 1er

 

Meeting with Jonathan Coe, as his latest novel, Expo 58 has just been published by Gallimard. Meet with him on Tuesday, February, 13th at 7.30pm at the Institution des Chartreux.

 

 

In collaboration with Gallimard.

 

Hosted by Vanessa Guignery

 

London, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk at the Central Office of Information and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Brittania, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century, and the first to be held since the Second World War.

As soon as he arrives at the site, Thomas feels that he has escaped a repressed, backward-looking country and fallen headlong into an era of modernity and optimism. He is equally bewitched by the surreal, gigantic Atomium, which stands at the heart of this brave new world, and by Anneke, the lovely Flemish hostess who meets him off his plane. But Thomas's new-found sense of freedom comes at a price: the Cold War is at its height, the mischievous Belgians have placed the American and Soviet pavilions right next to each other - and why is he being followed everywhere by two mysterious emissaries of the British Secret Service? Expo 58 may represent a glittering future, both for Europe and for Thomas himself, but he will soon be forced to decide where his public and private loyaties really lie.

 

5 € / Free for students, unemployed people and friends with Villa Gillet 

 

Reservations :

> On the phone : 04 78 27 02 48 (From Monday to Thursday from 1.30pm to 6pm and on Friday from 1.30 to 5pm)

> Book online

Jonathan  Coe