Catherine Lépront


Catherine Lépront was a French novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist.

Biography

Catherine Lépront was born into a family of doctors and musicians. First of all a liberal nurse, she was a playwright and literary advisor for the Éditions Gallimard. Her novels intertwine intimate and family history and political history. The memory of the Second World War, the Indochina War, the Algerian War, the colonial tragedies and those of the totalitarian world haunts her characters on which she looks with empathy and tender irony. All her work is marked by a profound criticism of bourgeois hypocrisy, arbitrary power and obtuse conformity. She excels at reproducing oral speech, while deepening the subtleties of inner reflections, intrigues with acute psychological tensions, and creating a poetic and lyrical climate that remind of Virginia Woolf and some Russian writers. Music, painting, and artistic creation in general played a decisive role here.
Her second husband was the Germanic philosopher.

Works