Philippe Lançon

Philippe Lançon is a French journalist and novelist born in 1963 in Vannes, Brittany. He is a cultural journalist who wrote for Charlie Hebdo and Libération. On January 7, 2015, he was one of the survivors of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo's editorial offices in Paris that killed twelve people. He was severely wounded in the attack. Le Lambeau (Disturbance / The Tattered Man), his 2018 Prix Femina winner, is a first-person account of the attack and its aftermath — the many months of reconstructive surgery, the slow re-emergence into life, the nature of survival and of bodily recovery. The book is widely considered one of the most important literary responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Le Lambeau was praised as a work of extraordinary literary quality: rigorous, clear-eyed, attentive to detail, and moving without sentimentality. It won numerous prizes including the Prix Femina and the Prix Renaudot essai. The book was translated into English as Disturbance by Charlotte Mandell. Lançon is a significant and respected figure in French literary culture. Le Lambeau is regarded as a landmark work in the literature of trauma and survival.