MEET THE BÀRD: Lola Lafon + Lauren Elkin
Tue, Mar 24
|Bàrd Books
Join Lola Lafon and translator Lauren Elkin to discuss this quietly powerful exploration of memory and forgetting, from one of France's leading feminist public intellectuals.
Time & Location
Mar 24, 2026, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Bàrd Books, 341-343 Roman Rd, Bow, London E3 5QR, UK
Guests
About the event
“More than Lafon’s elegant recapitulation of the facts, what’s interesting here is how she constructs a labyrinth of looping, interlocked narratives which spiral out beyond the Annex as the night progresses. . . . The penultimate pages of this elegiac book are a sword-thrust to the heart.”—Laurel Berger, Irish Times
In 2021, the award‑winning French writer Lola Lafon was granted permission to stay overnight-alone for ten hours-in the Annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. Lafon's visit to this space, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary, evoked the confinement and constant danger suffered by the Franks, and the family's ghostly presence as well. "The night was inhabited, lit by reflections," Lafon writes. "Some urgency still dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered."
Exploring the many stories told about Anne Frank, Lafon tries…