Ivan Jablonka is a Professor of contemporary history at the Université Paris-XIII-Nord and a novelist. His latest book, Laëtitia ou La fin des hommes (Seuil, 2016), takes up a news item story of a girl’s murder as an object of historical study and analyzes her life story as a “social fact.” It received the Renaudot and Goncourt Prizes, the Prix Médicis, the Prix Le Monde and the Prix des prix littéraires. His essay, L'Histoire est une littérature contemporaine, about the relationship between history and literature, was published in France by Le Seuil in 2014, and will be published in English translation by Cornell University Press in 2017. Ivan Jablonka talks about these books, and explores ideas about the relationship between history, literature, and faits divers, in conversation with Elisabeth Ladenson, a Professor in the Department of French at Columbia.

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