Pierre Hardy x Augustin Trapenard
A Literary Conversation — July 1, 2025, Café de Flore
On July 1st, the first floor of the Café de Flore hosted a timeless literary moment. Pierre Hardy and Augustin Trapenard came together for a conversation moderated by journalist Géraldine Sarratia, exploring a theme as simple as it is inexhaustible: islands, seen through the prism of books.
Books that speak of islands, books written by island-born authors, or books one would pack for an exile — real or imagined. Here, the island goes far beyond palm trees. They spoke of New York as an island-world, of the Île-de-France as a mental territory, and of inner islands, invisible yet very real.
Augustin Trapenard, literary critic and host of La Grande Librairie, shared his bedside reads with his signature sensitivity. Across from him, Pierre Hardy — curious creator and passionate reader — revealed an inner library populated with island writers and imaginary archipelagos.
interieure peuplee d'ecrivains insulaires et d'archipels imaginaires.
Some forty guests gathered amid wood paneling and soft light. Between knowing exchanges, reading memories and well-placed digressions, the conversation drew a personal and poetic cartography — where every book became a point on the map.
Books of the evening
Titles discussed during the conversation at Café de Flore.
Augustin Trapenard
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
The Art of Joy, Goliarda Sapienza
Push, Sapphire
The Sea Wall, Marguerite Duras
+ 35 titles
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Les petites filles modèles, Comtesse de Ségur
The 120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade
The Waves, Virginia Woolf
The Iliad, Homer
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
King Lear, William Shakespeare
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert
Maus, Art Spiegelman
Anima, Wajdi Mouawad
Secondhand Time, Svetlana Alexievich
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
Glamorama, Bret Easton Ellis
Dolores Claiborne, Stephen King
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Pretty Things, Virginie Despentes
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Lightness, Catherine Meurisse
The Overstory, Richard Powers
La horde du contrevent, Alain Damasio
The Years, Annie Ernaux
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Our Lady of the Flowers, Jean Genet
Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Dangerous Liaisons, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The World According to Garp, John Irving
Pierre Hardy
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Letter from an Unknown Woman / Confusion of Feelings, Stefan Zweig
A Room of One's Own / Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Miette, Pierre Michon
+ 31 titles
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
The Very Lowly, Christian Bobin
Vies minuscules, Pierre Michon
C'est la guerre, Louis Calaferte
The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, Jérôme Ferrari
Bouvard and Pécuchet, Gustave Flaubert
The Human Stain / Nemesis, Philip Roth
Dalva, Jim Harrison
Les faux-fuyants, Françoise Sagan
A Lover's Discourse / Mythologies / Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes
Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino
Eye and Mind, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Sex and Terror, Pascal Quignard
La solitude Caravage, Yannick Haenel
L'Apostrophe muette / Beau fixe, Jean-Christophe Bailly
In Praise of Shadows, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Nagori, Ryoko Sekiguchi
The Order of the Day / An Honourable Exit, Éric Vuillard
Hiroshima Mon Amour / The Ravishing of Lol Stein / Practicalities, Marguerite Duras
A Woman's Story / A Man's Place, Annie Ernaux
Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar
The Legacy / The Test, Marivaux
In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
The Day Before Happiness / Three Horses / The Opposite of One / Grandeur nature, Erri De Luca
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
The Long Road of Sand, Pier Paolo Pasolini
Martin Eden, Jack London
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close / Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
What Loving Means, Mathieu Lindon
To extend this literary escape, a book display has been installed at the 217 rue Saint-Honoré boutique. The titles discussed during the evening sit alongside a selection from Pierre Hardy's personal library. An invitation to discover these paper islands by stepping through the doors of the Maison.