Bio

Jakuta was born in Paris to Bosnian and Montenegrian parents. After studying at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she taught American literature and visual arts at the Sorbonne. Her fiction focuses on our relationship to art and technology, on the consequences of loss, and on the nature of life in an ever-changing urban environment. Her non-fiction has appeared in various publications. She has also translated novels by American authors Lila Azam Zanganeh, and she is currently working on the French translation of David Foster Wallace’s essays.

Jakuta Alikavazovic is currently working on her fourth novel. Her debut novel, Corps volatils, was published in 2007 in France, and was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman.

Project

At Faber I will be working in my project Strange Things in a Stranger Language: A Collection for the 21st Century. I wish to write (collect; remember; dream up) a collection of short pieces dealing with disorientation and the feeling of newness one is faced with during one’s experiences as a traveler –or an immigrant. I wish to grasp the instant something strange and confusing is met – a repository of easily forgotten feelings, nothing being more elusive than newness.