Maylis de Kerangal (born 16 June 1967) is a French author. Her novels deeply explore people in their work lives. She has won many awards for her work (including the Prix Médicis, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Grand prix RTL-Lire, and the Wellcome Book Prize), and her novels have been published in several languages. Two have been adapted as films.
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Life and career
Raised in Le Havre, Maylis de Kerangal studied history and philosophy in Rouen and Paris. She worked at Paris-based Éditions Gallimard in the children and youth department from 1991 to 1996, then travelled in the United States. After her return, she did graduate work at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
De Kerangal wrote her first novel in 2000, and then became a full-time writer. Her celebrated novel, Birth of a Bridge (Naissance d'un pont, 2010) presents a literary saga of a handful of men and women who are charged with building a bridge somewhere in a mythical California. Birth of a Bridge was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. It was awarded both the Prix Médicis in 2010 and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori in 2014, and has been translated into several languages worldwide.
Mend the Living (Réparer les vivants, 2014), translated by Jessica Moore and published in the UK, won the Prix Orange du Livre and the Grand prix RTL-Lire in France, and the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize (UK).
Mend the Living was adapted for the stage and produced at the theatre festival in Avignon. It received positive reviews for its intimate look at the realities and philosophical questioning around organ donation. It was adapted as the film Heal the Living (2016). A second English-language translation of the novel by Sam Taylor, entitled The Heart, was published in the US in 2016.
Eastbound (originally released in 2012 as Tangente vers l’est) was named a best book of 2023 by The New York Times.
Works
Je marche sous un ciel de traîne (Paris: Éditions Verticales, 2000) ISBN 9782843350641
La Vie voyageuse (Éditions Verticales, 2003) ISBN 978-2843351617
Ni fleurs ni couronnes (Éditions Verticales, 2006) ISBN 9782070777204
Dans les rapides (Paris: Éditions Naïve, 2007) ISBN 978-2350210865
Corniche Kennedy (Éditions Verticales, 2008) ISBN 9782070122196
Naissance d'un pont (Éditions Verticales, 2010) ISBN 978-2070130504
Birth of a Bridge, trans. Jessica Moore (Vancouver, BC: Talonbooks, 2014) ISBN 978-0889228894
Tangente vers l'est (Éditions Verticales, 2012) ISBN 9782070136742
Eastbound, trans. Jessica Moore (New York: Archipelago Books, 2023)
Réparer les vivants. Paris: Éditions Verticales, 2013. ISBN 9782070144136
Mend the Living, trans. Jessica Moore (UK: MacLehose Press and Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2016) ISBN 978-0-88922-973-0
The Heart, trans. Sam Taylor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) ISBN 978-0-374-24090-5
À ce stade de la nuit (éditions Guérin, 2014) ISBN 9782070107544
Un chemin de tables (Seuil, 2016) ISBN 9782370210753
Awards and honours
2010: Prix Médicis for Naissance d'un pont
2010: Prix Franz-Hessel for Naissance d'un pont
2012: Prix Landerneau for Tangente vers l'est
2014: Prix France Culture/Télérama for Réparer les vivants
2014: Grand prix RTL-Lire for Réparer les vivants
2014: Prix des lecteurs de L'Express-BFM TV for Réparer les vivants
2014: Prix Relay for Réparer les vivants
2014: Prix Orange du Livre for Réparer les vivants
2014: Grand prix de littérature Henri-Gal for her body of work
2014: Premio Gregor von Rezzori for Naissance d’un pont
2016: Premio Boccace for À ce stade de la nuit
2017: Wellcome Book Prize for Mend the Living
2022: Prix de la revue Études françaises for Un archipel. Fiction, récits, essais