David Foenkinos

David Foenkinos is a French novelist born in 1974 in Paris. He is one of France's most popular and prolific contemporary novelists, known for his blend of melancholy, humor, and emotional directness. His novel La Délicatesse (2009) became a major bestseller and was adapted into a film that he co-directed with his brother Stéphane. Foenkinos has published more than twenty novels, working across a range of registers from comedy to historical fiction. He won the Prix Renaudot in 2014 for Charlotte, a remarkable work about the German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was murdered in Auschwitz at age 26 while pregnant. The novel, written entirely in short verse-like paragraphs, is one of his most formally inventive and emotionally powerful works. Charlotte was also adapted for film and translated into numerous languages, introducing the story of Charlotte Salomon to a wide international readership. Foenkinos has since written several more novels, including Le Mystère Henri Pick (2016) and La famille Martin (2020). He is one of the most widely read French novelists of his generation, celebrated for his accessibility and emotional intelligence, and for his ability to illuminate historical tragedies through intimate human stories.