On Sunday, space and word lovers were invited to take part in a giant dictation, which will be read in orbit by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and broadcast at the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget, near Paris.

It is expected that about 500 people of all ages, fitted with a cap and a pen, at the dictation of the astronaut, an excerpt from Marguerite Duras’ novel “A Dam against the Pacific Ocean”, identify the organizers of this event free of charge. Access and outdoors.

At 3:00 p.m., on the amphitheater of the exhibition where tables and chairs will be installed, a giant screen will broadcast a pre-recorded video of Thomas Bisquet, on a mission since April at the International Space Station, 400 kilometers from Earth.

«
Thomas Pesquet chose this classic French literature Explains to AFP the novelist Rashid Santaky, founder of the giant dictation.

For eight years, he was the author of black novels (including “Caillera’s Angels Dress)”
Take dictation from school “to reject it in unlikely places and make it a popular exercise and”
Great »: Read more than 500 texts in correctional institutions, urban areas, the Stade de France, but also on social networks and on the radio.

«
By taking dictation into space, we will make people dream! “, Motivates the writer, eager to conquer”
shock “What might it be for some rehearsing on the school bench?

«
I really like the principle of irony – I wish – an exercise that sometimes has a bad reputation The 43-year-old astronaut abounds in his message.

Thomas Pesquet admits that at the age of twenty he read a book called Dam Against the Pacific, published in 1950.
Participating in the dictation of space, makes me want to read it again with my own eyes today, to see how the metaphor of the dam resounds in me now ».

After his first reading of the excerpt (about 700 characters), Rachid Santaky will deal with the second stanza, in slow flow, before a self-correcting session.

The event will be broadcast on Saturday 11 September at 5:00 pm during its broadcast on France Culture radio.