Philippe Jaenada

Philippe Jaenada is a French novelist born in 1964 in Montpellier. He is the author of a distinctive body of work that blends novelistic technique, documentary research, and a peculiarly digressive first-person voice. His books typically focus on real historical figures who were either wrongly convicted or somehow failed by justice, combining detective-work rigor with literary playfulness. Jaenada is the author of many novels including Le Chameau sauvage (1997, Prix de Flore) and Sulak (2013). His signature technique — exhaustively researched, parenthesis-laden narratives that follow real cases — was fully developed in La Serpe (The Sickle), his 2017 Prix Femina winner. La Serpe reconstructs the 1941 murder of three people at a Périgord château, for which their sole surviving family member — a young man named Georges Arnaud — was tried and acquitted. Jaenada's investigation spans seven hundred pages of meticulous research, personal digressions, and acute moral reflection. His 2021 novel Au printemps des monstres dealt with the 1964 kidnapping and murder of Luc Taron in France. Jaenada is celebrated as one of the most original voices in contemporary French narrative nonfiction, and his books have developed a devoted following for their combination of scholarly obsession and literary panache.