David Foenkinos

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David Foenkinos
David Foenkinos salon radio france 2011.jpg
BornDavid Foenkinos
(1974-10-28) 28 October 1974 (age 49)
Paris, France
OccupationNovelist, Scenarist, Musician
NationalityFrench

David Foenkinos, born 28 October 1974 in Paris, is a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director who studied both literature and music in Paris.

Contents

His novel La délicatesse is a bestseller in France. [1] A film based on the book was released in December 2011, with Audrey Tautou as the main character. [2] His novels have appeared in over forty languages, [3] and in 2014 he was awarded the Prix Renaudot for his novel Charlotte. [4]

Biography

Early years

Growing up in a home with few books and often absent parents, David Foenkinos read and wrote little during his childhood. At 16, he required emergency surgery as a result of a rare pleural infection and spent several months recuperating in hospital, where he began to devour books, learning to paint and play the guitar. From this experience, he says, he kept a drive for life, a force that he wanted to convey through his books. [5]

Education and career

He studied literature at the Sorbonne and music in a jazz school, eventually becoming a guitar teacher. In the evenings, he was a waiter in a restaurant. After unsuccessfully trying to set up a music group, he turned his hand to writing. [6]

After a handful of failed manuscripts, he found his style, and his first novel Inversion de l'idiotie: de l'influence de deux Polonais (“Inversion of idiocy: influenced by two Poles”), though refused by many other publishers, was published by Gallimard in 2002; the book earned him the François-Mauriac literary prize, awarded by the Académie Française. [7]

David Foenkinos is the brother of director Stéphane Foenkinos.

Filmography

Bibliography

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References

  1. David Foenkinos. Book Around The Corner
  2. Libération.fr
  3. Frank Quilitzsch, Lesung aus ‘Zum Glück Pauline’ in Anwesenheit des Autors , Thüringische Landeszeitung, 13 September 2013. Accessed 15 July 2023.
  4. Raphaëlle Leyris (5 November 2014). "Prix Renaudot : David Foenkinos récompensé pour " Charlotte "" (in French). Le Monde.
  5. Julien Bisson, David Foenkinos: Un succès littéraire a toujours des conséquences un peu ridicules (“Literary success always has slightly ridiculous outcomes”), lexpress.fr, 1 April 2016. Accessed 15 July 2023.
  6. Astrid De Larmina, Le Renaudot à Foenkinos, la consécration d'un phénomène, lefigaro.fr, 5 November 2014. Accessed 15 July 2023.
  7. Prix de l’Académie, 2002: David Foenkinos, Académie Française, 2002. Accessed 15 July 2023.

David Foenkinos at IMDb