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David Foenkinos

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David Foenkinos
BornDavid Foenkinos
(1974-10-28) 28 October 1974 (age 50)
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.

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

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Early years

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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

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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

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Bibliography

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  • Inversion de l'idiotie : de l'influence de deux Polonais (2001)
  • Entre les oreilles (2002)
  • Erotic Potential of My Wife (Le Potentiel érotique de ma femme) (2004)
  • En cas de bonheur (2005)
  • Les Cœurs autonomes (2006)
  • Qui se souvient de David Foenkinos ? (2007)
  • Nos séparations (2008)
  • Delicacy (La délicatesse) (2009)
  • Bernard (2010)
  • Lennon (2010)
  • Les souvenirs (2011)
  • Le petit garçon qui disait toujours non (2011)
  • Je vais mieux (2012)
  • Charlotte (2014)
  • Le Mystère Henri Pick (2016)
  • Vers la beauté (2018)
  • Deux sœurs (2019)
  • La famille Martin (2020)
  • Numéro deux (2022)
  • La vie heureuse (2024)

References

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  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.
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David Foenkinos at IMDb