Jean-Philippe Toussaint
| Jean-Philippe Toussaint | |
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Jean-Philippe Toussaint in 2013
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| Born |
29 November 1957 Brussels, Belgium |
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| Nationality | Belgian |
| Alma mater | Sciences Po (1978) |
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Jean-Philippe Toussaint (29 November 1957, Brussels) is a Belgian prose writer, photographer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir (Running Away), second volume of the « Cycle of Marie », a four-tome chronicle published over ten years and displaying the separation of Marie and her lover. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie (The Truth about Marie), third volume of the cycle, won the Prix Décembre.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint was born in Brussels, son of the Belgian journalist and writer Yvon Toussaint (1933-2013) and a bookseller mother of lituanian ascendance Monique Toussaint (née Lanskoronskis), but mostly raised in Paris where his father was the correspondent in France of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. He's the brother of the Belgian cinema producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint.
He lives in Brussels and Corsica, where his wife, Madeleine Santandrea (and mother of their two children) is from Bastia.
Raised in flourishing cultural milieu in Brussels, then after 1970 in Paris where he attended high school, he graduated from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (1979) and holds a master of Arts in contemporary history from the Sorbonne (1980). After his studies, he was engaged in teaching French for two years in Médéa, Algeria as an alternative to conscription; he henceforth decided to devote himself to literature, considering cinema to be technically and financially too demanding.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint's first two plays Rideau (1981) and Les Draps de lit (1982) and his short novel Échecs (1983) have never been published. He is strongly influenced by Samuel Beckett's style and generally by the Nouveau Roman. He wrote his first novel, La Salle de bain (The Bathroom) in 1985 and submitted it to Jérôme Lindon, the influential publisher of Les Éditions de Minuit in Paris, who accepted it and became his exclusive publisher. The novel and its style were critically acclaimed and established Jean-Philippe Toussaint as a young and promising author. Subsequently, he published Monsieur (a novel that was earned a large following in Japan and Asia) and L'Appareil-photo in the late 1980s which confirmed his status as a writer and allowed him to start a parallel career as a filmmaker. He directed two movies soon after: Monsieur (1990)—distinguished by the André Cavens Award—and La Sévillane (1992).
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