Muriel Barbery

Barbery in 2009

Muriel Barbery (born 28 May 1969) is a French novelist and philosophy teacher.[1] Her 2008 novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog quickly sold more than a million copies.

Biography

Barbery was born in Casablanca, Morocco but she and her parents moved when she was only two months old. She studied at the Lycée Lakanal, entered the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud in 1990 and obtained her agrégation in philosophy in 1993. She then taught philosophy at the Université de Bourgogne, in a lycée, and at the Saint-Lô IUFM (teacher training college). After she quit her job, she lived for two years in Japan (2008 and 2009). She currently lives in Europe.

Her novel L'Élégance du hérisson (translated into English by Alison Anderson as The Elegance of the Hedgehog) topped the French best-seller lists for 30 consecutive weeks[2] and was reprinted 50 times. By May 2008 it had sold more than a million copies.[3] It has been a bestseller in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, South Korea, and in many other countries. The story concerns the inhabitants of a small upper-class Paris apartment block, notably its crypto-intellectual concierge, Renée. She and Paloma, the likewise intellectual (even radical) teenage daughter of a resident family, narrate the book in turn. Renée also features briefly in Barbery's first novel, Une Gourmandise, which appeared in Anderson's English translation as Gourmet Rhapsody in 2009.[4] The Elegance of the Hedgehog was also turned into a film called Le Hérisson (in English The Hedgehog), directed by Mona Achache. It was released in 2009.

Novels

References


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