Author on Tour: Lola Lafon

About Lola Lafon

Lola Lafon is a French writer who grew up in Eastern Europe and studied dance and music in Paris and New York. Her books tackle several ideological themes such as capitalism, antifascism, and probe the violence and deceit of society toward women. Lola Lafon is politically engaged in several collectives, addressing feminist questions and concerns. Her prizewinning books include The Little Communist Who Never Smiled (trans. by Nick Caistor, Seven Stories Press) and Reeling: A Novel (trans. by Hildegarde Serle, Europa Editions).

About When you Listen to This Song

(trans. by Lauren Elkin, Yale University Press, 2025)

In 2021, 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. Lola 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,” the author writes. “Some urgency dwelled at the heart of the Annex, crouched there, ready to be discovered.”

Lola Lafon introduces a new vision of Anne Frank, not as a venerated and exploited myth but as the precocious, ambitious, and beloved girl she was, as well as a disciplined writer whose well-loved diary is in fact a carefully constructed literary work. Throughout, Lola Lafon reflects on what it means to lose loved ones, both Lola Lafon’s own family in the Holocaust and her childhood friend to the Khmer Rouge. A prize-winner and best-seller in France, this book asks us to consider the stories we tell ourselves about tragedy, how we grapple with loss, and why, in the face of danger and confinement, women write.

When You Listen to This Song will be released in the United States in November 2025.

Find more information here.

Schedule

Lola Lafon will be on tour in the US in November 2025 (more details to come).

• Sunday, November 16: Event @ Charleston Literary Festival (Charleston, SC) – event in English
• Tuesday, November 18: Event @ First Light Books (Austin, TX) – event in English
• Wednesday, November 19: Event @ The Wild Detectives (Dallas, TX) – event in English
• Friday, November 21: Event @ Basket Books (Houston, TX) – event in English
• (Date TBC): Event @ Miami Book Fair (Miami, FL) – event in English
• Monday, November 24: Conversation @ Albertine (New York, NY) – event in English

For more information, please email Valentine Richet: valentine.richet@villa-albertine.org