Literature in focus: A Berlin Romance

The CERN staff have many hidden talents. Who knows, maybe a colleague you see every day is actually a virtuoso violinist, an accomplished sportsman or an internationally renowned collector.

Mathilde Fontanet, a translator in the CERN Translation and Minutes Service, is a writer in her spare time. Those who read her first essays in the Graviton no doubt spotted her talent. Following the publication of four short stories, her first novel, 'Rabenstrasse 5', was published in Switzerland in May 2005. Its backdrop is the busy Berlin arts faculty in the early 1980s. Lydia, a student, meets a young woman who leads her into some rather unusual activities. In parallel, two friends, both professors of literature, each record their thoughts and emotions in a diary. The paths of Lydia and the two professors are to cross...

The novel will be published in France on 14 October. Mathilde Fontanet will present it in the framework of a forthcoming 'Literature in Focus' event in the CERN Library.