Hédi Kaddour


Hédi Kaddour is a French poet and novelist.

Biography

Hédi Kaddour was born of a Tunisian father and a French mother. Received 1st at the aggregation of modern letters, he is a translator of English, German and Arabic. He taught French literature and dramaturgy at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and journalistic writing at the .
He is now a professor of French literature at the New York University in France. He also teaches the writing of reports at the École des métiers de l'information and runs one of the writing workshops of the "NRF" at Éditions Gallimard.
Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Po&Sie , he sometimes gives literary columns to Le Monde des livres, Libération and Le Magazine Littéraire.
After several collections of poems published by Editions Gallimard, he published ' in 2005, a novel that plunges into the history of men and letters of the twentieth century. This book, which mixes adventure and espionage, also houses a sentimental plot tinged with melancholy. Hailed by critics, it received the prix Goncourt du premier roman and the prix du premier roman, and was ranked "Best French novel of the year 2005" by magazine Lire.
A collection of studies on this novel appeared under the title Études sur Waltenberg, roman de Hedi Kaddour, at editions Act Mem in 2007. The novel Waltenberg was translated into English by David Coward at Random House in 2007 and in German by Grete Osterwald in 2009 by Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
In January 2010, Hédi Kaddour published two new books: Savoir-vivre, novel, Gallimard, series "Blanche" and "Folio". A German translation appeared by Eichborn Verlag in April 2011. Les Pierres qui montent, notes et croquis de l'année 2008, Gallimard, series "Blanche".
In 2015, Hédi Kaddour received the Prix Jean-Freustié for his novel ', as well as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. He was also among the four finalists of the Prix Goncourt which was eventually awarded to Leïla Slimani. In March 2016, he also received the Prix Valery Larbaud for that novel.
Three of his poems were put into music in 1999 for voice and piano by composer Karol Beffa in the series Six Mélodies ; These pieces were subsequently transcribed for violin and piano in 2008.

Works

Novels