David Foenkinos | |
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| Born | David Foenkinos 28 October 1974 Paris, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, Scenarist, Musician |
| Nationality | French |
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]
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]
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.
