Katherine Pancol

Last updated
Katherine Pancol
Katherine Pancol 20090315 Salon du livre 2.jpg
Katherine Pancol at a book fair in Paris, France, in March 2009
Born (1954-10-22) 22 October 1954 (age 68)
Casablanca, Morocco
Occupation(s)Journalist, novelist

Katherine Pancol (born 22 October 1954) is a French journalist and novelist. Her books have been translated into some 30 languages, and sold millions of copies worldwide. In the United States, she is known as the author of The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (Penguin, 2013) and its sequel, The Slow Waltz of Turtles (Penguin, 2016), both translated by William Rodarmor.

Contents

Life and career

Katherine Pancol moved from Casablanca to France when she was five. She studied literature and initially became a French and Latin teacher before turning to journalism. While working for Paris-Match and Cosmopolitan , she was noticed by an intuitive publisher who encouraged her to begin writing fiction. Following the success of her first novel Moi D'abord in 1979, Pancol moved to New York City where she spent the next decade pursuing creative writing and screenwriting classes at Columbia University while producing three more novels La Barbare in 1981, Scarlett, si possible and Les Hommes cruels ne courent pas les rues .

Influenced by the American way of life, her style became more fast-paced and eventful.

Pancol is admired for her insights into human psychology, particularly women, and her sense of detail is often shaded with wry humor. Her works tend to have an uplifting theme while entertaining, and have been immensely successful commercially. One of her goals is to inspire women to dare to be themselves while keeping a positive relationship with life itself.

Published in 2006, her novel Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles (The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles) was a huge success in France, where it sold more than one million copies [1] and received the "Prix de Maison de la Presse, 2006" for the largest distribution in France. Katherine Pancol was awarded "Best author 2007" by Gorodets Publishing (Moscow). Crocodiles was the 6th best-selling book in France in 2008 (Le Figaro littéraire). It was translated into English by William Rodarmor and "Helen Dickinson" (pseud.) and published by Penguin Books in 2013. It has also been translated into Russian, Chinese, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese, Latvian, Czech, Slovak, Hebrew and Norwegian. It was adapted into the 2014 film Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles starring Julie Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart. The second book in the trilogy, The Slow Waltz of Turtles, was translated by William Rodarmor and published by Penguin in 2016.

Katherine Pancol is divorced from Pierre Pichot de Champfleury with whom she had two grown children, Clément and scenarist Charlotte. She lives in Paris, where she published Muchachas.

Work

Her three-volume saga The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, The Slow Waltz of Turtles, and Les Écureuils de Central Park sont tristes le lundi (The Central Park Squirrels are sad on Monday) describes the relationships between the members of a family and in particular between two very different sisters.

In Crocodiles, the main character, Josephine Cortes, struggles with a divorce, economic problems, a difficult teenage daughter, a tyrannical mother, and low self-esteem. [2] She gets entangled in a publishing scheme hatched by her sister Iris, becoming her ghostwriter. As Jo discovers her own talents, she struggles with not getting credit for her work, which becomes a runaway bestseller. Through these challenges, Joséphine grows and finds out who she really is. A review at The Washington Post called the book a "satisfying read." [2]

The many characters surrounding Joséphine evolve into a web of friendships, betrayals and dreams. Even Florine, the 12th century rebellious young heroine Joséphine creates for her novel, becomes a character in her own right as her destiny unfolds within a well-developed medieval setting.

Selected bibliography

Published by Albin Michel :

Published by Fayard :

Published by Éditions du Seuil :

English translations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Édith Piaf</span> French singer (1915–1963)

Édith Piaf was a French singer. Noted as France's national chanteuse, she was one of the country's most widely known international stars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Éluard</span> French poet (1895–1952)

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marguerite Duras</span> French writer and film director

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Françoise Sagan</span> French writer (1935–2004)

Françoise Sagan was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first – Bonjour Tristesse (1954) – which was written when she was a teenager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frida Boccara</span> Musical artist

Danielle Frida Hélène Boccara was a Moroccan-born French singer of Italian descent, who performed and recorded in a number of languages, including French, Spanish, English, Italian, German, Dutch and Russian.

Maryse Choisy (1903–1979) was a French philosophical writer, journalist and founder of the journal Psyché.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Laforêt</span> French singer and actress (1939–2019)

Marie Laforêt was a French singer and actress, particularly well known for her work during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978, she moved to Geneva, and acquired Swiss citizenship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Berthiaume</span> Musical artist

Raymond Berthiaume was a Canadian jazz singer, musician, producer and composer from Quebec, Canada.

<i>La colombe</i> 1860 opera by Charles Gounod

La Colombe is an opéra comique in two acts by Charles Gounod with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on the poem Le Faucon by Jean de La Fontaine, itself after a tale (V,9) in The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio.

<i>La princesse jaune</i> Opera by Camille Saint-Saëns

La princesse jaune, Op. 30, is an opéra comique in one act and five scenes by composer Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Louis Gallet. The opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 12 June 1872.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Villeneuve</span> French-Canadian pop singer-songwriter (born 1983)

Annie Villeneuve is a French-Canadian pop singer-songwriter. She participated at the first season of Star Académie in 2003. She also sang the French and the bilingual official song of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I Believe/J'imagine.

Michel Magne was a French film and experimental music composer.

<i>Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles</i> 2014 French film

Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles is a 2014 French drama film directed by Cécile Telerman and based on the best-selling novel Les Yeux jaunes des crocodiles by Katherine Pancol. The film stars Julie Depardieu, Emmanuelle Béart, Alice Isaaz and Jacques Weber.

The Prix Maison de la Presse is an annual French literary prize, established in 1970 by the Syndicat national des dépositaires de presse (SNDP) and Gabriel Cantin. Until 2005 it was known as Prix des Maisons de la Presse and given out in the two categories Novel (Roman) and Non-Fiction (Document), after which the name was changed and the categories merged into one.

<i>Correspondances</i> Song-cycle for soprano and orchestra by Henri Dutilleux

Correspondances is a song-cycle for soprano and orchestra written by the French composer Henri Dutilleux in 2002–2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Bramson</span> Danish writer

Karen Bramson was a Danish author who wrote novels and plays mostly in Danish or French although many of her writings have been translated into English.

Kadiatou Konaté is a Malian film director and screenwriter. Her most notable work is L'Enfant terrible, an animated short based on African myths. She has also produced several documentaries, often focusing on the issues of women and children in Mali.

Bob Morane is a Belgian comics series that was created by Henri Vernes and Dino Attanasio, it was published from May 21, 1959, in the Belgian weekly magazine Femmes d’Aujourd’hui and published in graphic novel form from 1960 to 2012 by Belgian publisher Marabout.

Moi les hommes, je les déteste is a misandric essay by the French writer Pauline Harmange, a feminist activist from Lille. It was published in 2020, initially by the micropublisher Monstrograph, and later by a major publishing company, Éditions du Seuil.

Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? is an unfinished 1983 chamber piece by Canadian composer Claude Vivier. It is one of his most famous compositions, as the libretto is claimed by some to have predicted the composer's own murder in March of the same year. The piece was left incomplete and unrevised with just three short movements, a typical performance lasting around eight minutes.

References

  1. ↑ Basilières, Michel (2014-03-31). "Slick chick lit of the Bridget Jones variety, with a decidedly Parisian accent". The Toronto Star. ISSN   0319-0781 . Retrieved 2015-08-01.
  2. 1 2 See, Carolyn (16 January 2014). "Book review: 'The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles', by Katherine Pancol". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.