Antoine Bello is a French-American author born in Boston, Massachusetts, whose works have been widely translated. His novels touch on multiple subjects, such as the relation between reality and fiction, human cognition and journalism. He writes in French, his native tongue. He has been living in the greater New York Area since 2002.
Work
Bello's first book, Les Funambules, a collection of short stories, was published in France in 1996. It received the Prix littéraire de la vocation awarded by the Fondation Bleustein-Blanchet. One of the short stories included in Les Funambules had received the Prix du jeune écrivain de langue française in 1993. Since then, Bello's has published nine novels, which have been translated into a dozen languages, such as German, Russian, Greek and Japanese. Six of them are available in English : The Falsifiers, The Pathfinders, The Showrunners, An American Novel, The Disappearance of Emilie Brunet, and The Missing Piece. All his books have been published by Éditions Gallimard. Bello's main body of work, known as the Falsificateurs trilogy, centers around a secret international organization, the CFR, which falsifies reality and rewrites history. The first installment, Les Falsificateurs, was published in 2007. Les Éclaireurs was awarded the prestigious Prix France Culture - Télérama award in 2009. Les Producteurs was released in 2015. Bello's trilogy has taken a new significance with the current debate about fake news, prompting him to give interviews in French and Canadian media. Bello is a staunch supporter of Wikipedia. Since 2014, he has been donating his royalties to the Wikimedia Foundation and urging his readers to follow suit. In an interview to the web-hosting company OVH, he compared Wikipedia to a public service. In another interview with the Wikimedia Foundation, he said he was humbled by the editors' dedication: "Every time I use it , I think of the people who have taken the time and devoted long evenings doing that. And I wonder, ‘Who are these people? Why did they do it? What an appetite for knowledge and for sharing it they must have.’ And I feel blessed that people do that."
Prior career
Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Bello co-founded the French company Ubiqus, which he sold in 2007. He's also the creator of the now-defunct ranking website Rankopedia.
