You are warmly invited to a special literary and musical evening dedicated to the release of the new novel Un choix impossible (“An Impossible Choice”) by renowned French author Dominique Fernandez, member of the French Academy. At the heart of the novel lies the tragic and brilliant fate of composer Sergei Prokofiev, whose 135th anniversary we will be celebrating next year.
The book raises powerful questions about creativity, compromise, and inner freedom — the very dilemmas that Prokofiev, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, had to face.
This reimagining of a Prokofiev torn between his art and his convictions, follows in the tradition of the Dominique Fernandez’s major novels centered on the lives — or pivotal episodes — of artists: Pasolini (In the Hand of the Angel, Prix Goncourt 1982), Tchaikovsky (Court of Honor, 1997), Caravaggio (The Race to the Abyss, 2002), Bronzino (The Society of Mystery, 2017), and Picasso (The Abandoned Painter, 2019).
The program includes:
A presentation of the book by the author (in French with simultaneous translation into Russian)
A discussion on the difficult moral choices of artists in the context of 20th-century history
Book signing and informal conversation
Don’t miss this unique meeting with an author whose new novel resonates with literature, music, and history.
Free admission (registration required)
At 19:00, the evening will continue with the concert Mysteries of the Russian Soul, featuring works by S. Prokofiev, as well as romances by P. Tchaikovsky set to poems by A. Pushkin (free admission, registration required).
THE AUTHOR:
Dominique Fernandez, member of the French Academy, is the author of an extensive and prolific body of work (over a hundred published books), which has earned him numerous prestigious awards, including the Médicis Prize in 1974 for Porporino or the Mysteries of Naples, the Goncourt Prize in 1982 for In the Hand of the Angel, the Charles-Oumont Prize from the Fondation de France in 1986 for Love, the Prince Pierre of Monaco Prize for his entire body of work in 1986, the Mediterranean Prize and the Brancati Prize in 1988 for The Raft of the Gorgona, the Lambda Literary Award in the USA in 2003 for the translation of Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name, Art and Homosexuality, the François Mauriac Prize and the Grand Prix Jean-Giono in 2009 for Ramon.
