Daniel Odier

Daniel Robert Odier (born in 1945 in Geneva), also known by his pseudonym Delacorta, is a Swiss author and screenwriter. Praised by Anaïs Nin as "an outstanding writer and a dazzling poet," he is also a prolific writer on Eastern religious traditions, especially Tantra.

Odier began studies at the school of Beaux Arts at Rome but later chose to focus on writing rather than painting. He received his university degree in Paris and was employed by a leading Swiss newspaper as a music critic. He has taught screen writing at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. He is married to the violinist Nell Gotkovsky.

Odier is a teacher of Tantra, claiming in his book Tantric Quest, and in his teaching, to have experienced a mystical initiation from a tantric dakini, Lalita Devi, in Kashmir. Odier also claims to have received dharma transmission from Jing Hui, abbot of Bailin Monastery and dharma successor of Hsu Yun, using the name "Ming Qing". He founded the "Tantra/Chan centre" in Paris, which operated from 1995 to 2000, and has taught courses on Eastern spiritual traditions at the University of California. He has published a number of books on Tantra and related subjects, some of which have been translated into English and other languages.

Apart from his works on Tantra, Odier is best known for a series of six novels published under the pseudonym 'Delacorta.' The books center around an underage girl named Alba and her sugar daddy, Serge Gorodish, a classically trained pianist with depressive tendencies. The two enjoy an intense romantic relationship (never actually consummated), and embark together upon various confidence schemes and other intrigues. These often result in the death or discomfiture of less sympathetic characters, although Alba and Gorodish themselves appear to be motivated more by their own profit and amusement than by any moral considerations. The series includes the novel Diva which was later used as the basis for a popular French film of the same name. Odier has also used the Delacorta pseudonym for several unrelated books (mostly detective novels or thrillers) and as a screenwriter. The Alba/Gorodish books have appeared in omnibus editions in French and have been published in numerous other languages. Most of Odier's other fiction remains untranslated.

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