#BrusselsBookCity — Writers in Brussels: test your knowledge!
A little quiz that will guide you through Brussels in the steps of famous authors who either were born here or lived here …
Can you discover who these authors are?
- In the nineteenth century, these two famous English novelists came to Brussels to learn French in a school for young girls located in the current Rue Baron Horta.
- This Belgian surrealist poet was visited by Salvador Dali and Paul Eluard at Rue Franklin 78.
- Nobel prizewinner J.M.G. Le Clézio is a great admirer of this poet whose childhood home is located at Rue Defacqz 69 in Saint-Gilles.
- Wounded by his lover at Rue des Brasseurs 1, this tumultuous French poet entrusted the manuscript of his poem Une Saison en enfer to the Brussels printer Jacques Poot.
- Born in Brussels, the author of Mort d’un parfait bilingue is also a photographer with a passion for his home town.
- A mural representing the most famous hero of this great cartoonist born in Etterbeek can be seen in Rue de l’Etuve.
- Having fled his native England, this nineteenth-century poet stayed at Rue Ducale 51 and gave his name to a Brussels café.
- This prolific Belgian playwright of Flemish origin who wrote in French was born in Rue de l’Arbre Bénit in Ixelles, where his master Charles De Coster passed away.
- This French-born author who has acquired Belgian nationality and lives in Ixelles paid tribute to the ‘parrots of Place d’Arezzo’ in his eponymous novel, Les Perroquets de la place d’Arezzo.
- During his exile, this French author stayed at Grand-Place 27, from where he set off every day to visit his mistress Juliette Drouet in a room in the Galeries Royales.
Answers
- Charlotte (1816–1855) and Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
- Paul Nougé (1895–1967)
- Henri Michaux (1899–1984)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
- Thomas Gunzig (b. 1970)
- Hergé (1907–1983)
- Lord Byron (1788–1824)
- Michel de Ghelderode (1898–1962)
- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (b. 1960)
- Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
With the support of the ‘Promotion de Bruxelles’ agency of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation .