Gabrielle Wittkop

Gabrielle Wittkop (née Menardeau) (1920 – 22 December 2002) was a French writer. She was born in Nantes. She married Justus Wittkop, a Nazi deserter, in Paris and moved with him to Germany in 1946 after the end of the Second World War.[1]

Her first book, on the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann was published in German in 1966. Her first novel, the transgressive erotic drama Le Necrophile (The Necrophiliac, 1972) was published in 1972 by Régine Desforges. She wrote several highly regarded novels and travelogues. She also contributed to the art pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

After her partner committed suicide, she wrote an account of it in Hemlock (1988). She herself committed suicide in 2002, after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.[1] Although popular in France and Germany, Wittkop's works are not widely available in English. The Necrophiliac was translated in a Canadian edition by Don Bapst in 2011, and in a Danish edition by Christina Ytzen in 2018.