Martin Winckler

Martin Winckler (born Marc Zaffran on 22 February 1955 in French Algeria) is a French M.D. and short story, novel and essay writer. His main subjects are the French medical system, the healing relationship and contraception; he also wrote critical papers and books about TV serials (he is one of the first specialists of this subject in France).

His family returned to France in 1963. He was a dedicated young reader and writer. After graduating from the Medicine Faculty of Tours, he practised in a small country town nearby from 1983 to 1993. During this time he worked for the magazine Prescrire under his real name, Marc Zaffran.

In 1984, his first short stories were published under a pseudonym: Martin Winckler. This name is a tribute to the great French writer Georges Perec: Gaspard Winckler is one of the main characters in La Vie mode d'emploi, a very important book in Marc Zaffran's literary education. His first novel La Vacation (pub. 1989) introduces the central character of his major novels, Bruno Sachs M.D., who became famous in France with his second published novel La Maladie de Sachs (Sachs disease in English), adapted for a movie by Rosalinde and Michel Deville (1999). In it, Albert Dupontel plays Bruno Sachs.

In 1993 he stopped being a country doctor and became a full-time writer and translator. However, he remains a part-time doctor at the Le Mans public hospital.

Created in 2004, his web site has published numerous texts about healthcare, contraception, TV serials. The "Contraception / Gynécology" section is the most frequently viewed.

From 2009 he lived in Montreal where he worked as an invited researcher at the Centre de Recherches en éthique à l'Université de Montréal (CREUM), on a research project about the training of medical personnel.

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Wikipedia