[Launch] Insula with Théo Casciani, Gabriel-René Franjou and Megan Bruinen

Join us for the launch of Insula, a new speculative fiction novel by Théo Casciani blending autofiction, intimate confessions, queer aesthetics, video games, and a formidable apocalyptic vision of the contemporary world. Théo will be accompanied by musician and artist friend Megan Bruinen who is working on the sound design for the theatrical adaptation of the book. After the reading, Théo will be joined in conversation by our dear Gabriel-René Franjou about the book and Théo's work. Welcome!

The reading and conversation will be mainly in French with some excerpts in English.

Schedule

17:00 - 19:00

About Insula

Insula is a novel published by Éditions P.O.L on January 8, 2026. The title is first and foremost the name of a new kind of clandestine augmented reality game: users simply ingest an illegal, mind-altering pill to access a simulation. But it is also a floating part of the brain taken over by disease; an island in one’s head. Théo, the narrator, becomes aware of its existence in the middle of a clandestine party in a disused office building in central London, which he must leave to join his dying father’s bedside. He then explores the multiple meanings of this word, using fiction as his only weapon to answer the questions that this experience imposes on him, as his only remedy to imagine what comes next, to resolve reality and examine what lies on the other side of our world. The text brings together multiple eras, territories, and identities, Dantean overtones and paranoid feelings, weaving them into a single story that navigates between testimony and fantasy, the intimate and the political. Dystopia, love story, tale of mourning and ghosts, investigation and nightmare, Insula is above all a portal between several dimensions: the true and the false, the real and the digital, life and death.

About Théo Casciani

Théo Casciani is an author. He studied at SciencesPo, Sorbonne University, then La Cambre, where he is now teaching. Rétine, his first novel, was published by Éditions P.O.L in 2019 and will be released in English and Polish by HELA Press. His fictions have been presented through multiple forms and collaborations in places such as WIELS [BE], Reference.Point [UK], Centre Pompidou [FR], Montez Press [US], GöteborgOperans [SW], Spazio Maiocchi [IT] or the Louvre [FR], and publications like AOC, 90antiope, Kaleidoscope, European Review of Books and The Brooklyn Rail. His next book, Insula, will be out in 2026.

About Megan Bruinen

Megan Bruinen is a Dutch visual artist and musician. She develops her practice at the intersection of language, composition and moving image. Her work has been presented in exhibitions, public performances and on various radio stations across Europe. She holds an MFA from LUCA School of Arts, Brussels and has been an artist-in-residence at Tenjinyama Art Studio (2024, JP) and Villa Dufraine (2025, FR).

About Gabriel-René Franjou

Gabriel René Franjou (1996) is an artist, writer, cultural worker based in Brussels, Belgium. Gabriel studies emotion in entangled organic and digital networks, using hyperlinks as creative and critical tools. They regularly publish and perform both fiction and poetry, and work as a translator between French and English.