He decided in January 2001 to “stop everything” and write instead. Littell had worked for eight years for the French charity Action Contre La Faim in Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya and Afghanistan. “For me, the essential thing is the question of the torturer, of political murder, of state murder” The book, which has topped French bestseller lists for weeks, will be published in the United States in 2008, following an extensive bidding war won by HarperCollins.īorn in New York to a Jewish family of Polish origin, the 39-year-old grew up in France where he lived until the age of 18, before returning to the United States to attend university. He first drafted Les Bienveillantes over four months while living in Moscow. “It’s certainly linked to my literary tradition which is more French than Anglo-Saxon,” Littell said. The American author burst onto the French literary scene barely two-and-a-half months ago, having chosen to write his debut novel in French. Les Bienveillantes (The Well-Meaning Ones) had attracted widespread attention in France for its treatment of a controversial subject even before it won the award on Monday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |