Considered one of the best contemporary French authors, Philippe Claudel is a teacher, writer, screenwriter, and director. He was born on February 2, 1962, in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe, France. Over the years, he has maintained a deep attachment to the French region of Lorraine, where he still lives and works as a professor at the University of Nancy. Claudel holds a degree in modern literature and has enjoyed consistent literary success since his first novel, Meuse l’oubli, was published in 1999.

For several years, he worked as a teacher in the prison of Nancy, an experience that he later explored in his works, such as Le Bruit des trousseaux. In this book, he directly addresses the issues of penitentiaries, the relationship between prisoners and the outside world, and the pain of what they have left behind, often coupled with regret for losing contact with their families.

Claudel achieved widespread success with both critics and audiences in 2003 with Les Âmes grises, a novel set during the First World War in a small town in Lorraine, where the body of a ten-year-old girl is discovered. The story is narrated by a policeman with a thirst for truth who, twenty years later, attempts to piece together the mystery in the hope of illuminating both the case and his own past. With this novel, Philippe Claudel won numerous awards, including the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2003.

He is a member of the esteemed Académie Goncourt. Some of his novels, such as Les Âmes grises, La Petite fille de Monsieur Linh, and Le Rapport de Brodeck, have been translated into more than 40 languages. Philippe Claudel is also the director of five films, which have won several international awards.

About the book in focus

Grey Souls (Quercus, 2015)

A bestseller in France and winner of the Prix Renaudot, Grey Souls is a mesmerizing and atmospheric tale of three mysterious deaths in an oddly isolated French village during World War I. The placid daily life of a small town near the front appears impervious to the nearby pounding of artillery fire and the parade of wounded strangers passing through its streets. But the illusion of calm is soon shattered by the deaths of three innocents: the charming new schoolmistress, who captures every male heart only to kill herself; an angelic ten-year-old girl, who is found strangled; and a local policeman’s cherished wife, who dies alone in labor while her husband is hunting the murderer.

Twenty years later, the policeman still struggles to make sense of these tragedies, a struggle that both torments and sustains him. But excavating the town’s secret history will bring neither peace to him nor justice to the wicked.

Most of his books have been published by MacLehose Press.

Book

Grey Souls (Quercus, 2015)

When
January 2025

Where
Kerala Literature Festival 2025

AUTHORS ON TOUR ↩️