PAPER CHASE: Crowds at the Calcutta Book Fair. A Telegraph picture

A galaxy of French writers and poets at workshops, book launches, readings and debate. Exhibitions of photographs and music releases, visiting cartoonists and journalists, a festival of top-flight French films and even a French DJ Nite at Tantra?

A slice of France in Calcutta ? that?s what the Book Fair promises to bring to town, with help from the embassy of the overseas partner country and Alliance Fran?aise de Calcutta. Accordingly, a rich collage of France-centric events has been planned with Calcutta?s favourite fair as the fulcrum.

Leading the charge of the French authors at the fair will be the likes of Jean-Marie Gustave, Pierre Michon and Dominique Fernandez. Gustave?s novel Le Clezio and Michon?s The Origin of the World will both be published in the Rupa France collection. Fernandez?s Porporino, published in March 2004, will also be part of the Rupa France set and he will launch Sentiment Indien on January 28.

Patrick Chamoiseau?s novel Chronicles of the Seven Sorrows will also be published in Rupa France, while some Lionel Ray poems will be published in Bengali as part of an anthology of French contemporary poetry by Sahitya Akademi, according to Alliance Francaise de Calcutta director Nicolas Blasquez.

The launch of a collection of French literature in Bengali, in association with Peacock Books, and a collection of children?s literature in association with Zubaan are also scheduled.

An exhibition of portraits of writers by legendary lensman Ferrante Ferranti is on the cards, too.

?The fair journal will see three different French cartoonists at work and launch of some French music CDs, while special correspondents from a few leading French newspapers will also visit the city on the occasion,? said Emmanuelle De Decker, deputy director, cultural affairs, Alliance Francaise de Calcutta.

The Book Fair film festival to be held in collaboration with Nandan (January 21-24), will feature such standout films like Madame Bovary by Claude Chabrol, Beaumarchais l?Insolent by Edouard Molinaro and Poil de Carotte by Julien Duvivier.

Objectif Paris, an exhibition of photographs curated by Anne Cartier-Bresson, will be inaugurated at CIMA Gallery on January 27 with French ambassador in India Dominique Girard as the chief guest.

Artists Paritosh Sen and Daniel Pennac will be the guests of honour. The exhibition will be on till February 5. Tantra will host a French DJ night on January 28.

Another exhibition, From Big-Bang to Deconstruction ? A Journey with Jacques Derrida, will run at Oxford Bookstore from January 29 to February 3.