Miriam Gordis, Director
Albertine Books, Villa Albertine, 972 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10002
@albertinebooks

What kind of reader were you as a child? What was the first book that made a strong impression on you?

I read everything as a child. I can't remember the first book that made a strong impression on me but I know I loved fairy tales and anything fantastical. As a small child, I used to describe the plots of books to my parents in great detail (now my long-suffering boyfriend has to listen to this). When I was a bit older, I did my local library's summer reading challenge and read easily 3 times the number of required books. The librarians had to tell me that I couldn't get any extra prizes for that...

What do you love about being able to work around books every day?
I worked in publishing before coming to work at Albertine, and books often felt very abstract to me. I wasn't face to face with the reading public and mostly read PDFs or answered emails for my job. When I joined Albertine, it was such a joy to have unlimited books at my fingertips but also to be able to make recommendations and discuss stories with our customers. We have a really loyal clientele, especially since we're the only French bookstore in New York, and often customers to whom I've recommended books will come back to tell me what they liked and disliked. It's a very dynamic and rewarding job.

A great thing about living in New York City…
There are so many things that are great, but one thing is how many independent bookstores thrive here. I regularly browse at McNally Jackson, Molasses Books, Community Books, The Center for Fiction, Unnameable Books, Greenlight Books, and Books Are Magic, just to name a few...
I studied translation and have always loved working with international literature and New York is also a really great place for that kind of cultural exchange. There's a large French-speaking community here, but also a large community of people discovering the French language and French culture. We have a monthly book club that takes place entirely in French, and we often run out of chairs. It's amazing to see so much enthusiasm around books. I think New York is probably one of the only places where literary readings have the same kind of glamor as the Met Ball.

What makes you happy? What are you grateful for?
I'm grateful for the wonderful booksellers I work with. We're a small team, but everyone contributes their own vision for the store. I'm also grateful that Albertine is able to thrive and host events and experiment, thanks to the support of the Institut français and my colleagues at the Villa Albertine. 
As for what makes me happy, I work right next to Central Park. When the weather is warm, I can go sit in the sun in the park on my lunch break and I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Tell us about some of your favorite books and writers of all time.
I love a lot of French writers, though my taste isn't especially original: Marguerite Duras, Maryse Condé, Annie Ernaux, Neige Sinno, Nastassja Martin, Mona Chollet, Adrien Bosc, Frantz Fanon. Genres work really differently in France than they do in the US, and it allows for a lot of fascinating blurring of boundaries. There's a really fascinating literary memoir that came out a few years ago in France called L'homme-chevreuil by Geoffroy Delorme (it was translated in the UK as Deer Man), which is basically about a man who went and lived like a deer in the woods for seven years. It's part anthropological exploration, part ecological manifesto, part autofiction. It's just as wild as it sounds but it feels like a really critical book and one that would be so much harder to do in the US. I also really loved Aliène by Phoebe Hadjimarkos Clarke and La Disassociation by Nadia Yala Kisikudi, and I hope they find English publishers so I can recommend them to everyone I know. 

I also love a lot of non-French writers, especially Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Namwali Serpell, Daisy Hildyard, Alba de Céspedes, Cristina Rivera Garza, Zain Khalid, Maya Binyam, Benjamín Labatut, David Graeber, and Rachel Aviv. There's a special place in my heart for Tove Jansson, the creator of the Moomins, and for Kay Thompson, who created Eloise.

As you reflect on your year of reading, what books have you recently enjoyed? And what books are you looking forward to in 2025?
I recently read La Realidad, the new Neige Sinno book, which is incredible, and If Only by Vigdis Hjorth. A few books I'm excited about that are coming out this year in translation are On the Clock by Claire Baglin (translated from the French En Salle), Sleeping Children by Anthony Passeron (originally Les Enfants endormis), and Lili Is Crying by Hélène Bessette (Lili pleure). I'm also excited about Trauma Plot by Jamie Hood, Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp, and Audition by Katie Kitamura (I haven't read that one yet, but would vouch for anything Katie Kitamura writes).

Interviewed by Mia Funk