Gilles Carpentier
Gilles Carpentier (14 June 1950, Paris – 16 September 2016[1]) was a French writer and editor
Biography
After various menial jobs at the PTT or in the cinema, then a journalist with the cultural section of Rouge in the 1970s, where he published numerous chronicles on free jazz, Carpentier also became a reader for the Éditions du Seuil.[1] In charge of the manuscript service and member of its reading committee from 1981, he was a full-fledged publisher in 1992 and until 2003.[1] He discovered Agota Kristof with the novel The Notebook[2] which became a great success in France and also the writer Abdelhak Serhane.[1] He also edited numerous African and Francophone authors including Aimé Césaire (whose complete poetry he edited), Ahmadou Kourouma, Sony Labou Tansi, Kateb Yacine, Kossi Efoui, or Tierno Monenembo.[1][2]
Éditions du Seuil greeted him as an "immense reader and discoverer of talent".[1]
He was also the author of six books, which were all in one way or another about one of his favorite subjects, the contemporary city. His latest novel, Les Bienveillantes [not to be mistaken with J. Littell's eponymous work (2006)] is written in an entirely dialogued form.
Les Manuscrits de la marmotte published in 1984, earned him the Prix Fénéon for literature.
Works
- 1984: Les Manuscrits de la marmotte, Éditions du Seuil, Prix Fénéon
- 1988: Tous couchés, Seuil
- 1992: Haussmann m'empêche de dormir, Seuil
- 1994: Scandale de bronze. Lettre à Aimé Césaire, Seuil
- 1999: Couper cabèche, Seuil
- 2002: Les Bienveillantes, Stock
