LEADER
Samuél Lopez-Barrantes has lived in Paris since 2010 as a novelist, musician, and literary tour guide. He will be leading the Paris walks on the May 2027 Classical Pursuits tour Art and Resistance in WWII Paris and Champagne.
A former Sorbonne professor, he holds an MA in social theory and an MFA in creative writing. He is fiction editor at SOUVENIR Magazine, and is the co-founder of Kingdom Anywhere, an English-language publisher in Paris. His latest novel, The Requisitions, is a historical metafiction set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, and was called, “a strangely and luminously hopeful novel” by The Metropolitan Review. Find out more about Samuél’s writing and literary walks at samuellopezbarrantes.com
RECOMMENDED READINGS
- A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941–1945 by Ernst Jünger, translated by Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen (Columbia UP, 2019/2020)
- The Silence of the Sea by Vercors [Jean Bruller] (Bloomsbury, 2019); also available in an earlier translation via Internet Archive with free account
- Army of Shadows by Joseph Kessel, translated by Rainer J. Hanshe (Contra Mundum, 2017)
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
WWII historical fiction, as a genre, has educated millions, often at the expense of historical truth, so how to make sense of so many disparate narratives?
As is often the case with history, the more one learns, the less one knows, and yet certain books do offer unique insight into the way we have come to understand the past. In this interdisciplinary seminar that includes readings, lectures, and discussions around WWII literature, author Samuél Lopez-Barrantes has chosen three books to help illuminate the lessons to be learned from the most destructive war in human history, all the while acknowledging the impossibility of ever arriving at a singular truth.
From the wartime diaries of Ernst Jünger, an erudite German soldier who documented the Paris occupation in stark detail, to The Silence of the Sea (1942), the first resistant book to be published in France, to the Army of Shadows (1943) by Joseph Kessel, a novel commissioned by Charles de Gualle to recount France’s burgeoning story of resistance, this three-part interdisciplinary seminar will illuminate three different ways to think about the story of the Nazi Occupation of France.
Led by author Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, whose 2024 historical metafiction novel, The Requisitions, was called, “vivid in a way that is almost tangible … a strangely and luminously hopeful novel” by The Metropolitan Review, this genre-bending seminar combines historical lecture and philosophical discussion and will accommodate a larger group than our standard online seminars.
Each session will start with a 45-minute presentation by Samuél, followed by 45 minutes of open discussion.
PRACTICAL DETAILS
All online programs are priced in Canadian dollars.
Once you register, you’ll get an order confirmation. We’ll send you the Zoom link and a welcome letter about 3 weeks before the course starts.
This seminar is a great way to deepen your tour experience! Thinking about joining our May 2027 tour Art and Resistance in WWII Paris and Champagne? Book the tour and we’ll apply the seminar cost toward your booking.
Classical Pursuits will record this series, and make each session privately available to registered participants for up to two weeks after that session.
Online seminar payments are nonrefundable. Discount codes must be used at the time of purchase.
This online seminar is open to a maximum of 50 registrants. See full terms and conditions for Classical Pursuits online seminars. By registering for a seminar, you agree to abide by our code of conduct.
Image credit: Le Silence de la Mer movie poster, Wikimedia Commons
