Antoine Laurain (born 1972 in Paris) is a French writer.
His first novel, The Portrait [Ailleurs si j'y suis] won the Drouot Prize in 2007, and was followed by Smoking Kills [Fume et tue] (2008) and Carrefour des Nostalgies (2009). In 2012 The President’s Hat [Le Chapeau de Mitterrand] would be one of the year's great successes. The novel won the Landerneau prize for emerging writers and the Relay travel prize. Translated into 17 languages and published in English by Gallic Books, in 2013 it became one of the highest selling French books in translation. Antoine Laurain participated in a US tour for The President’s Hat at the invitation of American independent bookshops. The tour lasted 15 days, during which time he visited 10 cities.
In 2015 The President’s Hat was adapted for television (France 2) with Frédéric Diefenthal, Michel Leeb, Frédérique Bell and Roland Giraud (directed by Robin Davis, music by Vladimir Cosma).
The Red Notebook [La femme au carnet rouge] was published in 2014 and was translated into 22 languages, including under the German title of Liebe mit zwei Unbekannten (Hoffmann und Campe) and the Italian title of La donna dal taccuino rosso (Einaudi). The cinematic rights were sold to UGC.
In 2016, the German translation of The Red Notebook made the Spiegel bestseller list, and the German translation of The President’s Hat became the eighth-highest selling book in Germany that year. French Rhapsody [Rhapsodie française] was published the same year by Flammarion. Antoine Laurain returned to the US for the French Rhapsody tour, which consisted of six cities in nine days, and which confirmed the popularity of his books beyond the French borders.
On the 11th of April 2020, Camilla Parker Bowles, the Queen of England and wife of Charles III, published [1] a list of nine books she recommended for reading during the COVID-19 lockdown on the Clarence House Instagram account, the account previously used to provide updates on King Charles and Queen Camilla's activities. Only one French title appeared: The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain.
Laurain's most recent novel, Les caprices d'un astre (2022) has been published in English as An Astronomer in Love.
Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie d'Arrast was an Irish-born French explorer, geographer, ethnologist, linguist and astronomer notable for his travels in Ethiopia during the first half of the 19th century. He was the older brother of Arnaud-Michel d'Abbadie, with whom he travelled.
Michel Tremblay is a Québécois novelist and playwright.
Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction, his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French politician who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest holder of that position in the history of France. As a former Socialist Party First Secretary, he was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic.
Jean de La Fontaine was a French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, as well as in French regional languages.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, Vicomte de Saint-Exupéry, known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator. He received several prestigious literary awards for his novella The Little Prince and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight. His works have been translated into many languages.
The Little Prince is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.
Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing, also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.
The Élysée Palace, or simply the Élysée, is the official residence of the President of the French Republic in Paris. Completed in 1722, it was built for nobleman and army officer Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, who had been appointed Governor of Île-de-France in 1719. It is located on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré near the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement, the name Élysée deriving from the Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. Important foreign visitors are hosted at the nearby Hôtel de Marigny, a palatial residence.
Jean-Baptiste Antoine Marcelin Marbot, known as Marcellin Marbot, was a French general, famous for his memoirs depicting the Napoleonic age of warfare. He belongs to a family that has distinguished itself particularly in the career of arms, giving three generals to France in less than 50 years, including his elder brother, Antoine Adolphe Marcelin Marbot.
Georges Auguste Escoffier was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine; Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style. In particular, he codified the recipes for the five mother sauces. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois, Escoffier was a preeminent figure in London and Paris during the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century.
A top hat is a tall, flat-crowned hat traditionally associated with formal wear in Western dress codes, meaning white tie, morning dress, or frock coat. Traditionally made of black silk or sometimes grey, the top hat emerged in Western fashion by the end of the 18th century. Although it declined by the time of the counterculture of the 1960s, it remains a formal fashion accessory. A collapsible variant of a top hat, developed in the 19th century, is known as an opera hat.
Golden hats are a very specific and rare type of archaeological artifact from Bronze Age Europe. So far, four such objects are known. The objects are made of thin sheet gold and were attached externally to long conical and brimmed headdresses which were probably made of some organic material and served to stabilise the external gold leaf. The following conical golden hats are known as of 2012:
The Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by the British writer Doris Lessing. Like her two books that followed, it enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature called Lessing's "inner space fiction"; her work that explores mental and societal breakdown. The novel contains anti-war and anti-Stalinist messages, an extended analysis of communism and the Communist Party in England from the 1930s to the 1950s, and an examination of the budding sexual revolution and women's liberation movements.
Pierre Guyotat was a French writer.
Louis Alexandre Raimon, better known as Alexandre de Paris, was a famous French hairdresser. He was responsible for creating Elizabeth Taylor's coiffure in the 1963 Hollywood epic Cleopatra. He also styled Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn and Lauren Bacall, among others. He was nicknamed the "Prince de la coiffure", "d'Artagnan de la coiffure", "Sphinx de la coiffure", and "Figaro". His signature chignons (knot or a coil of hair arranged in the back of the head) and his flamboyant style made him famous, setting fashions in hairstyling for decades.
Marie-Aude Murail is a French writer. She is best known for her numerous children and teen novels that go over a wide range of subjects including blended families, self-identification, mental health and serious illnesses. Her books span first-grade reading to young adult fiction, and include slice of life drama and comedy, detective novels and thrillers, fantasy and historical novels.
Nicolas de Malézieu was a French intellectual, Greek scholar and mathematician.
Marie Étienne is a French poet and novelist. In 2009, her book Roi des cent cavaliers and now translated into English as King of a Hundred Horseman won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Étienne is the author of eleven books of poems and nine books of prose, which her translator Marilyn Hacker says "could be variously classed as fiction, memoir, and cultural history, some partaking of all three".
The Café du Croissant or Crosse du Croisant is a café in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, France. It is famous for having been the place of the assassination of Jean Jaurès by Raoul Villain on 31 July 1914.