Reading | The ballad of the vacuum-packed chicken - Lucie Rico

On April 9, French author Lucie Rico will be coming to the Centre Culturel Français to read from her novel "The Ballad of the Vacuum-Packed Chicken".

Hannah has been a vegetarian since her youth. She lives in the city and has few connections to the village life of her childhood. However, when her mother dies, she returns to her mother's chicken farm - temporarily, she thinks, until everything is sorted out. But country life, in all its beauty and horror, takes hold of her, and Hannah soon develops a very special relationship with the animals: She slaughters and vacuum packs them, but says goodbye to each chicken with its own biography enclosed in the packaging. This gesture of appreciation gives rise to a marketing project that takes on crazy proportions: "Hannah's Chickens" become a supermarket hit with unexpected consequences for the life and limb of humans and animals.

Lucie Rico: born in Perpignan in 1988, writes films in Aubervilliers, books in Perpignan and teaches literary writing in Clermont-Ferrand. The Ballad of the Vacuum-Packed Chicken won the Prix du roman d'écologie and the Cheval Blanc literary prize in 2021.

>> In Lucie Rico's amusing and madcap novel, the protagonist's life slowly but surely spirals out of control within the relentless pecking order of the chicken coop, the meat industry and the human world, and the path from farm idyll to the garish meat counter seems shorter than expected.

Wednesday, April 9 | 7:00 p.m.
CCFF
Admission: € 11 | € 7
Language: D/F
In cooperation with: Literaturhaus Freiburg, France Center of the University campus Freiburg