Fonds Nyssen and Les Éperonniers

The Hubert Nyssen Fund was inaugurated on April 13, 2005. Housed at ULg's Centre d'Etudes du Livre Contemporain, it comprises Hubert Nyssen's personal archives, which bear witness to his dual career as a novelist and publisher (founder of Actes Sud in 1978), and a complete collection of works published by Actes Sud and in co-publication with other publishers (nearly 7,000 volumes). This collection is regularly updated with new releases, making the Université de Liège a kind of memory relay for one of France's biggest publishing houses, with a particularly rich catalog of foreign literature; 

Hubert Nyssen, writer and publisher

Hubert Nyssen is not only a novelist and publisher - he has written 13 novels, several collections of poetry and several essays on books, including Lira bien qui lira le dernier. Lettre libertine sur la lecture, published by Espace de Liberté/Labor, in the "Liberté j'écris ton nom" collection - and also holds a doctorate from the University of Aix-en-Provence and an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège.The archives he is handing over to ULg's Centre d'Etudes du Livre Contemporain are an invaluable testimony to contemporary cultural life, in which Hubert Nyssen came into contact with many of the leading figures in the international world of literature, entertainment and politics.As he himself points out on his personal website (http://www.hubertnyssen.com), the classification of his archives, the drawing up of a catalog with the help of two archivists - Isabelle Nancy and Mélanie Mérienne - and their deposit in a university that already houses the Fonds Simenon, were motivated by the memory of a sort of autodafé that he attended as a teenager, in which his grandparents' archives disappeared (Cf. Zeg ou les infortunes de la fiction, Actes Sud, 2002, p.125).

Contact(s): Centre d'Etudes du Livre Contemporain (CELIC)
Pr Pascal Durand - +32 4 3663249 - Pascal.Durand@uliege.be