French author to give lecture

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 16

French author to give lecture

One of France’s outstanding writers, Mr Michel Butor, will arrive in Christchurch on Monday for a two-day visit, during which he will give a public lecture on contemporary literature.

Bom in Paris in 1926, Mr Butor spent a large part of his youth in the city’s Latin Quarter later graduating from the Sorbonne, where he took a degree in philosophy. Before he became an author he held several teaching posts dealing with French literature. Most of his teaching was done outside France, and he spent long periods in Egypt and Britain. Mr Butor’s reputation has been achieved mainly through his novels. His later works have been described by observers as unconventional ones in which poems, drawings and photographs combine in units that “obviously defy conventional classification.” Mr Butor will be the guest

of the French department of the University of Canterbury, where he will give his lecture on Monday evening.