Books

This Book is not an autobiography. It is rather the product of an interaction between imagination, experience, fiction, reminiscence and fantasy. A cocktail mixed in the environment of UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – and…

On his first morning of retirement, Jacques Dupont confronts Brigitte’s ambitious plans for renovation, exercise, dieting, and social life, while memories of thirty years of UNESCO missions begin calling him back to his desk.

I was in New York on one of my missions to the United Nations to represent UNESCO at a meeting. I had been to the UN on several occasions before. In fact, I had established, over the years, a fairly…

I remember when I got off the plane I found Heathrow airport crowded. The sky was blue, but everyone had an umbrella. I guess, in England you just do not trust the weather forecast.

The meeting in Morocco had been scheduled to last three days. It was a restricted, semi-formal consultation, at the invitation of the Government of Morocco, to help finalize an important project for international assistance on the theme of: ‘A national…

An urgent UNESCO assignment sends Jacques Dupont to Indonesia with the wrong briefing file. Improvisation, cultural discovery, and a remarkably short speech turn the Borobudur Festival into one of his most memorable missions.

I opened my eyes. The room was dark. It was not my room. The street lights projected a ghostly silhouette onto the window. As I moved in my bed, the silhouette turned and spoke. I recognized Brigitte’s voice: “Are you…

The twelve-hour flight had resulted in a first-rate jet lag. Unfortunately, Melatonine had not yet been marketed and I was desperately struggling to sleep in my tiny room at the Tokyo Hotel. One would assume that at fifty, after twenty…

Brigitte had offered to drive me to the airport since she wanted to do some shopping with Françoise at the IKEA department store in Roissy, only a few minutes from the airport.

Budget cuts at UNESCO send Jacques Dupont from Sri Lanka to India, where mistaken identity, Bollywood glamour, a women’s meeting in Bangalore, and a troublesome Kama Sutra gift turn one combined mission into comic chaos.