Jake Lamar | |
|---|---|
 Jake Lamar signing at the 7th Interpol'Art Festival in Reims , in October 2012. | |
| Born | 1961 (age 63–64) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
Jake Lamar (born in 1961 in The Bronx, New York City) is an African-American writer, novelist, playwright, and cultural critic [1] living in Paris. [1]
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After graduating from Harvard University, Lamar spent six years writing for Time magazine. [2] He has lived in Paris since 1993 [3] and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po. [4] At age 30, he published a memoir, Bourgeois Blues, in which he evoked his relationship with his father. With it, he won the Lyndhurst Prize. [4] In 1993, he moved to Paris in the 18th arrondissement where he still resides.
After a near fatal heart problem in 2015, Lamar wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times on the quality of the socialist system of health care in France. [5] His most recent work, Viper's Dream (No Exit Press, 2023) is a crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between the years 1936 and 1961. [6] A version of Viper's Dream was broadcast (in French) as a 10-episode radio play in 2019. That production included many jazz tracks of the period. Viper's Dream was published in French as a novel by Rivages/Noir in 2021. Viper's Dream was published in the US by Crooked Lane Books in 2023.
In July 2024, Viper's Dream received the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award. [7] In December 2024, Das schwarze Chamäleon, the German translation of his novel If 6 Were 9, won the German Crime Fiction Award in the international category.
