The Library will be closed on the following days in May:
Wednesday 1 May – Fête du Travail (Labor Day)
Wednesday 8 May – Fête de la Victoire 1945 (WWII Victory Day)
Thursday 9 May – Jeudi de l’Ascension (Ascension)
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Mamta Chaudhry’s debut novel, Haunting Paris, is set in Paris in 1989. Alone in her luminous apartment on Île Saint-Louis, Sylvie discovers a mysterious letter among her late lover’s possessions, launching her into a decades-old search for a child who vanished in the turbulence of the Second World War. She is unaware that she is watched over by Julien’s ghost, his love for her powerful enough to draw him back to this world, though doomed now to remain a silent observer. Sylvie’s quest leads her deep into the secrets of Julien’s past, shedding new light on the dark days of Nazi-occupied Paris. A timeless story of love and loss, Haunting Paris matches emotional intensity with lyrical storytelling to explore grief, family secrets, and the undeniable power of memory.
The book has been praised as “elegantly wrought” by The New York Times Book Review, “extraordinarily beautiful” by Bonjour Paris, and “a heart-wrenching love letter to Paris” by Publishers Weekly. Marilynne Robinson called “this fine first novel . . . a small parable, pondering the nature of civilization itself,” and Russell Banks described it as “powerful and moving . . . with a heartbreaking, profoundly adult love story at its center.”
Mamta Chaudhry lives with her husband in Coral Gables, Florida. They spend part of each year in India and in France. Much of her professional career was in television and classical radio at stations in Calcutta, Gainesville, Dallas, and Miami. Mamta has studied with Marilynne Robinson and has also taught literature and creative writing at the University of Miami. Her early fiction, poetry, and feature articles have been published in newspapers and magazines in the States and in India. She is currently working on a second novel.
For her virtual evening at the Library, Mamta will be in conversation with Russell Banks. Russell is the author of Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift, and is one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.
The Library will be closed on the following days in May:
Wednesday 1 May – Fête du Travail (Labor Day)
Wednesday 8 May – Fête de la Victoire 1945 (WWII Victory Day)
Thursday 9 May – Jeudi de l’Ascension (Ascension)
Friends of the Library (50€ – 249€) will receive invitations to unique, donor-only programs.
Folio Society (250€ – 1 999€) supporters will be invited to the annual Book Award ceremony, as well as donor-only programs.
Gutenberg Society (2 000€ – 9 999€) patrons will have the opportunity to host a dinner with an Evenings with an Author sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg speaker, as well as all the benefits listed above.
Ex Libris Lux Society (10 000€ and above) sponsors will be invited to an annual dinner with Ex Libris Lux donors and Library leadership, as well as all the benefits listed above. They will also be invited to an exclusive cocktail dînatoire with our Gala speaker.
A charitable gift from your estate is simple to implement and is easy to change if you should need to access the assets during your lifetime. If you would like to include a gift to the Library in your will, ask your estate planning attorney to add this suggested wording to your will or living trust. Please make sure to use the Library’s correct legal name appears in all final documents as: The American Library in Paris Inc.
Unrestricted Gift: I give, devise, and bequeath to the American Library in Paris Inc, (insert dollar amount) Dollars* to be used for its general purposes.
Residuary Bequest: I give, devise, and bequeath to the American Library in Paris Inc , (insert percentage amount) percent of the residue of my estate to be used for its general purposes.