Jean Hatzfeld

Jean Hatzfeld in 2011

Jean Hatzfeld (born 1949) is a French writer and war correspondent.^[1] He grew up in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small village in Auvergne.

 Jean Hatzfeld began his career as a journalist in 1976 at the French daily Libération. He also wrote for other newspapers and made documentaries for television. He covered the Middle-Eastern conflict, the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the demise of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. 
 He became a long term war correspondent in the Lebanon, at the eve of the 80's. He reported from the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s (where he was seriously injured) and he also spents months in Lebanon, Israel and Iraq, then else countries. In 1994, Jean Hatzfeld went to east Africa to report on the Rwandan genocide for Liberation. Dedicating himself to genocide research, he eventually published a book on the genocide called Dans le nu de la vie (2000). Primarily the stories of Tutsi survivors, the book won numerous awards: the Prix Culture 2000, the Prix Pierre Mille and the Prix France Culture. Hatzfeld followed up with a volume of stories by Hutu killers; this book Une Saison de machettes won the Prix Femina in 2003 and the Prix Jossef Kessel in 2004. A third volume on the genocide La stratégie des antilopes won the Prix Médicis and the Prix Ryszard-Kapuściński. Then came Englebert des Collines (2013) and Un Papa de sang (2015).
 He also wrote five novels. Several books have been translated into several languages, among them into English translated by Joshua David Jordan and by Linda Coverdale who won the Scott-Moncrieff Prize for her work on Machete Season.

Selected books

• 1994: L'air de la guerre, L'Olivier.
• 1999: La guerre au bord du fleuve, L'Olivier.
• 2000: Dans le nu de la vie, Le Seuil (Life Laid Bare, Other Press, 2007. )
• 2003: Une saison de machettes, Le Seuil (Machete Season, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005.)
• 2005: La ligne de flottaison, Le Seuil.
• 2007: La stratégie des antilopes, Le Seuil (The Antelope's Strategy, Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2010.)
• 2011: Où en est la nuit, Gallimard.
• 2013: Robert Mitchum ne revient pas, Gallimard.
• 2014: Englebert des collines, Gallimard.
• 2015: Un papa de sang, Gallimard (Papa Blood, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2018;)
• 2018: Deux mètres dix, Gallimard.

References