Olivier Guez

Olivier Guez is a French journalist, screenwriter, and novelist born in 1974 in Strasbourg. He studied political science and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Germany, Israel, and the United States. His background in journalism is evident in the documentary precision of his prose fiction. Guez is the author of several nonfiction works on European history and politics before turning to fiction. His novel La disparition de Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, 2017) won the Prix Renaudot and was translated into numerous languages. The novel follows the real-life postwar flight of Auschwitz's 'Angel of Death' through Latin America, reconstructing Mengele's decades of hiding with novelistic vividness. The book draws on extensive research and presents Mengele's exile not as an adventure but as a slow, paranoid deterioration — a study in the moral vacancy of a man who committed evil and felt no remorse. The novel won considerable praise for its historical rigor and its chilling literary portrait. Guez has also written screenplays for film and television. He is considered one of the leading writers in the tradition of literary journalism and narrative nonfiction-inflected fiction.