Joël Dicker was born on 16 June 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland. He attended Geneva schools. At the age of 19, he enrolled at the Cours Florent in Paris. After one year he returned to Switzerland to attend law school, where he received his Masters of Law from the University of Geneva in 2010.
Career
In 2010 Dicker won the Prix des écrivains genevois, a prize for unpublished manuscripts. Subsequently, Parisian editor Bernard de Fallois acquired Dicker's winning submission, Les derniers jours de nos pères , and published it in early 2012. The book tells the story of the Special Operations Executive, a British World War II organization. In September 2012, de Fallois published Dicker's La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert, the story of an American novelist with writer's block who begins to investigate a murder of which his former university professor is accused. The book was coolly received in North America but had more success in Europe. At the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, many foreign editors acquired the rights from Bernard de Fallois. The book was translated into 32 languages. In late October 2012, La Vérité… won the 2012 Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française. It was also shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Femina. In November 2012, La Vérité… was awarded the prix Goncourt des lycéens. For this prize, 2000 French-speaking high-school students vote on their favorite novel from the year's Prix Goncourt shortlist. In summer 2013, La Vérité… displaced Dan Brown’s Infernofrom the top of bestseller lists all over Europe. Early readers of the English translation described the book as "literary and clever." Considered Switzerland's answer to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and compared to the fiction of Nabokov and Roth as well as the television series Twin Peaks, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair was published in the United States by Penguin on 27 May 2014. It was one of the biggest original acquisitions in the history of Penguin Books. It has also subsequently been made into a 10-part television mini-series. Dicker's third novel, Le Livre des Baltimore, was released on 26 September 2015. Dicker's fourth novel, La disparition de Stephanie Mailer, was released in March 2018.
