François, Portrait of an Absent Friend

A blank voice in the middle of the night tells Michaël Ferrier of the deaths of his friend François and his daughter Bahia. In the following devastation, speech resumes and memories return: how two young loners meet and connect, their years of study, their passion for cinema and radio. Memories unfold and gradually come together in a chronicle of friendship and a memorial to a lost friend.

François, Portrait of an Absent Friend is both an elegy to a friend and a wonderfully delicate, poetic look at friendship in general. Ferrier tells us how friendships are formed, how they are lost, how they are maintained, and what happens when they are taken from us. From Paris to Japan, Ferrier transports us to the writer’s time and the place as we feel the pain, the bitterness, and the longing left by François’ death.

MICHAËL FERRIER (Strasbourg, 1967) is a French-Mauritian writer and academic currently living in Tokyo. Ferrier’s work is markedly interdisciplinary, spanning three countries and their cultures, and questioning the complexity of French/francophone history and identity in relation to other nations.

MARTIN MUNRO is Winthrop-King Professor of French and Francophone Studies and director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University. He has translated several works by Michaël Ferrier.

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