Death of the novelist Henri Coulonges, author of “The farewell to the wild woman”

2023-05-08 16:42:21

Thanks to this first book, the writer, who died on May 4 at the age of 86, was the winner of the 1979 French Academy’s Grand Prize for the Novel.

The writer Henri Coulonges, winner of the 1979 French Academy Grand Prize for the Novel for Farewell to the Wild Womandied on May 4 at the age of 86, one of his two sons told AFP on Monday.

Born in Deauville (Calvados) under the name of Marc-Antoine de Dampierre, this painter passionate about art distinguished himself mainly through his pen in the 1970s and 1980s.

Journal Contributor Knowledge of the Artshe publishes his first novel, The banks of the Irrawaddyat Fayard in 1975, focusing on the anti-Nazi resistance in German student circles during the Second World War.

His greatest critical and commercial success came four years later with Farewell to the Wild Woman (Stock), which also earned it the RTL consumer prize. Translated into fifteen languages, the book describes the German debacle through the wanderings of a 12-year-old girl fleeing Dresden in 1945 with her mother in a state of shock.

Translated into 17 languages

Will follow, still at Stock, At the approach of an evening in the world (1983) about a young Irish girl between Kashmir and the Emerald Isle during the First World War, The Moravian Brethren (1986), awarded the prize of the Four Juries, The Letter to Kirilenko (1989), crowned with the Chateaubriand prize, then, at Grasset, The Hungarian March (1992), passage of the comet (1996) et Six greylag geese (2001).

In 1997, Henri Coulonges narrowly missed being elected to the French Academy against journalist Jean-François Revel. He will not represent himself again, relates his son Henri de Dampierre. His father, a painter exhibited under his real name, notably in the Parisian gallery Denise René, was “not interested in honors”, he explains to AFP.

Translated into 17 languages, Henri Coulonges’ novels have been published in the collection The pocket bookthe edition of Farewell to the Wild Woman remaining available in bookstores, emphasizes Henri de Dampierre.