Philippe Claudel

Life

After studying in Nancy, he remained there and for eleven years worked as a teacher in prisons. Contact with his students inspired short stories, novels, and then screenplays. He has said that the experience made him give up his simple opinions about people, about guilt, about the water to judge others. "It's clear to me now that it would have been impossible for me to write a novel like Brodeck's Report or Grey Souls, to make a movie like I've Loved You So Long, if I hadn't been in jail."

Awards

His best-known work to date is the novel Les Âmes grises (Grey Souls), which won the Prix Renaudot in France, was shortlisted for the American Gumshoe Award, and won Sweden's Martin Beck Award. He won the 2003 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for Les petites mécaniques, and the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for Brodeck’s Report, ' his hallucinatory story – almost a dark fairy-tale in which Kafka meets the Grimms – of an uneasy homecoming after wrenching tragedy."

His debut film I've Loved You So Long won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Claudel also won the César Award for Best First Feature Film for the film.

Works

Novels

• Quelques-uns des cent regrets: roman, Balland, 1999
• Le Bruit des trousseaux (2002)
• Grey souls (Les Âmes grises) (2003); Librairie générale française, 2006, . Grand prix des lectrices de Elle, Translator Adriana Hunter, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Phoenix House, 2005, . ; Random House Digital, 2007,
• Monsieur Linh and His Child (La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh), Translator Euan Cameron, Stock, 2005, ; Quercus, 2011,
• Brodeck's Report (Le Rapport de Brodeck), Translator John Cullen, 2007.
• The Investigator (L'Enquête), Paris, Stock, 2010, 278 p., ; Doubleday, 2012, Translator John Cullen,
• Parfums, 2012, Paris, Stock, 224 p. ()
• L’Arbre du pays Toraja, 2016 () (The Tree of the Toraja), Translator Euan Cameron, MacLehose Press Editions 2018 ()
• Inhumaines, 2017, Stock, ()
• L'Archipel du Chien, 2018, Stock ()

Films

• I've Loved You So Long, 2008, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein
• Tous les soleils, 2011, with Stefano Accorsi, Neri Marcorè, Lisa Cipriani, Clotilde Courau, Anouk Aimée
• Before the Winter Chill, 2013, with Kristin Scott Thomas, Daniel Auteuil and Leïla Bekhti
• A Childhood (2015)

Adaptations

• Les Âmes grises, 2005, directed by Yves Angelo, with Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jacques Villeret. Distributed by Warner Bros.

References

References

1. (2 February 1962). "Philippe Claudel – EVENE". Evene.fr.
2. (2 July 2006). "French novelist follows inspirations wherever they lead". Deseret News.
3. "Philippe Claudel".
4. ''The Independent'', 14 May 2010
5. ''The Independent'', Friday 14 May 2010, Review Section p. 29
6. (30 June 2010). "Claudel and Brodeck". Granta Magazine.
7. (14 May 2010). "Philippe Claudel wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize". The Independent.
8. Boyd Tonkin, Reports of love in a landscape of fear, ''The Independent'', 14 May 2010
9. (26 June 2009). "Philippe Claudel – Le Rapport de Brodeck | Incurable Logophilia". Incurablelogophilia.wordpress.com.