The Festival
The Quais du Polar festival has become “THE” unmissable event for the crime genre in France.
Now established in the French and European cultural landscape, it is recognized both by book and publishing professionals and by the general public, who come in ever greater numbers to the various events offered by the festival.
Since 2005, authors of 60 different nationalities have been invited.
Novels, comics, TV series, cinema, round tables, meetings, urban investigation, theatre, exhibitions, games… More than 200 events are organised each year, whether in the main venues (Palais de la Bourse, Lyon City Hall, Chapelle de la Trinité, Théâtre Comédie Odéon) or in partner media libraries, libraries, cinemas or museums.
The festival is aimed at all audiences: bulimic readers of detective novels, amateur detectives, enthusiasts of the chronicle of news items, cinephiles in search of thrills, curious walkers, citizens attentive to the way the world works, lovers of parties and encounters, fans of graphic design and comic books… Big or small, alone, with friends or family, day or night: everyone has an appointment at the Quais du Polar!
The festival is completely free, with the exception of film screenings and some events in partner cinemas and museums.
The crime genre
The image of detective literature, or “noir” literature, has changed a lot in recent years.
A popular genre par excellence, the crime novel is acclaimed by all readers, including lovers of “white” literature and cinema.
- A current and contemporary genre
Long considered a minor genre, the detective novel is now one of the most popular literatures in France.
One in five books published in France is a detective novel, more than 3,300 titles published, 80 specialized collections and 23 million copies sold per year.
The thriller genre is gaining unprecedented enthusiasm, this craze also extends to different fields such as cinema, television and theatre.
- A popular genre
James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, David Peace or Michael Connelly… are regularly cited among the greatest contemporary authors. And the novels of Dan Brown, Jean-Christophe Grangé, Harlan Coben or Patricia Cornwell… are frequently at the top of the best-selling novel rankings of all genres.
- Renowned authors
Far from the clichés of the detective in a raincoat, the thriller deals with the current problems of society and offers a great opening to the world with authors of all nationalities (United States, Europe, Latin America, Scandinavia, Russia, Asia…).
- A wide audience
Crime fiction affects both regular readers of novels, but also “little readers” or occasional readers.
It brings together both a female and male readership, from the youngest to the oldest, readers sometimes having a favorite “sub-genre” such as thrillers, historical thrillers, spy novels, mystery novels, etc.
Lyon, Crime City
Lyon was the birthplace of cinema with the Lumière brothers, criminal anthropology with Alexandre Lacassagne, scientific investigation methods and forensic medicine with Edmond Locard, and the greats of crime fiction through literature, cinema and illustration with Frédéric Dard, Jacques Deray, Bertrand Tavernier and Jacques Tardi.
The European capital of printing, books and humanism during the Renaissance, Lyon is also a city marked by popular revolts and great political utopias.
Long associated with the fog of its rivers, the mysteries of esotericism and its two-thousand-year-old history, as well as the dark vision of its great writers Jean Reverzy and Louis Calaferte, Lyon is today a city on the move, a stronghold of culture and the art of living in Europe.
All the imagination of the detective story is there, between the Saône and the Rhône, anchored in an urban, social and cultural universe in full transformation.
This is why, with the greatest authors of the genre, we wanted to invite the public to discover or rediscover crime fiction in all its diversity through a programme that opens up another look at the city and a modern, unifying event that is open to the world and that is part of the vast territory of a metropolis of more than 1.4 million inhabitants that is one of the most attractive in Europe.
The organization
The Quais du Polar association aims to promote and disseminate detective literature, noir cinema and all other forms of artistic expression related to this genre, through the organization of cultural events in Lyon, in the Metropolis and in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region.