Introduction
Philippe Claudel (born 2 February 1962) is a French writer and film director.
Claudel was born in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, Meurthe-et-Moselle. In addition to his writing, Claudel is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nancy.
He directed the 2008 film I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). Much admired, it won the 2009 BAFTA for the best film not in English.
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 necessity 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."
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, ISBN 978-2-253-10908-2. Grand prix des lectrices de Elle, Translator Adriana Hunter, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Phoenix House, 2005, ISBN 978-0-297-84779-3. By a Slow River. Translator Hoyt Rogers. Knopf. 2006.; Random House Digital, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4000-7801-1
- Monsieur Linh and His Child (La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh), Stock, 2005, ISBN 978-2-234-05774-6; Quercus, 2011, ISBN 978-1-906694-99-9
- Brodeck's Report (Le Rapport de Brodeck) 2007.
- The Investigator (L'Enquête), Paris, Stock, 2010, 278 p., ISBN 978-2234065154; Doubleday, 2012, Translator John Cullen, ISBN 978-0-385-53534-2
- Parfums, 2012, Paris, Stock, 224 p. (ISBN 2234073251)
- L’Arbre du pays Toraja, 2016 (ISBN 978-2-2340-8150-5)
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)
- "Philippe Claudel – Le Rapport de Brodeck | Incurable Logophilia". Incurablelogophilia.wordpress.com. 26 June 2009. Retrieved 26 October 2010.
Adaptations
- Les Âmes grises, 2005, directed by Yves Angelo, with Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jacques Villeret. Distributed by Warner Bros.