Frédéric Brun (born 30 June 1960, Paris) is a French writer, the author of a trilogy published by
Stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
which earned him several literary prizes, including the
prix Goncourt du premier roman
The Prix Goncourt (french: Le prix Goncourt, , ''The Goncourt Prize'') is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward o ...
for ''Perla'', as well as the one bestowed by the "Association Écritures et Spiritualités" for ''Une prière pour Nacha''.
Biography
In 2007, he published his first book ''Perla''. Shortly after the death of his mother, Perla, deported fifty years earlier to the
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
, he tried to understand her ordeal and read numerous testimonies about the camps. Strangely at the same moment, he felt attracted by the German poets,
Novalis
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (), was a German polymath who was a writer, philosopher, poet, aristocrat and mystic. He is regarded as an idiosyncratic and influential figure of ...
Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel (; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figure ...
and painter
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscape ...
. A hymn to the mother, it is also a book of correspondence and questioning, on love, death, birth and transmission.
In 2008, a second book was published: ''Le Roman de Jean''. In this book, he retraces the journey of his father
Jean Dréjac
Jean Dréjac, stage name of Jean André Jacques Brun (3 June 1921, in Grenoble – 11 August 2003, in Paris) was a French singer and composer.
He is noted for writing the songs " Ah! Le petit vin blanc", "Sous le ciel de Paris" and "La Chansonnet ...
, author of songs, from fragments and rough drafts. After his disappearance, faced with questions about the afterlife, he finds an appeasement with the ancient philosophers.
In 2010, he completed a family trilogy with ''Une prière pour Nacha''. Nacha suffers from
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...
. At the moment when he was present at the end of her life, the narrator noticed that the story of his family's branch had not been told to him. He is going to make an investigation in Poland and thanks to a Yizker-bukh, a book of memory, he would get to know some details of the life of his ancestors. ''Une prière pour Nacha'' is a book of hope at the crossroads of religions.
In 2015, he published the biographical novel ''Novalis et l'âme poétique du monde'' and created the éditions Poesis. That same year, he was a member of the
Prix Françoise Sagan
The prix Françoise Sagan is a French literary award established in 2010 by , the son of Françoise Sagan.
The Prize
Awarded at the beginning of June, the Prix Françoise Sagan rewards "an author never yet rewarded, not even selected in recent ...
.
In 2016, he conceived the design, the choice of texts and the foreword of the anthology ''Habiter poétiquement le monde'' (Poesis).
Work
*2007: ''Perla'', Stock, .
*2008: ''Le Roman de Jean'', Stock, .
*2010: ''Une prière pour Nacha'', Stock, .
*2015: ''Novalis et l'âme poétique du monde'', Poesis, .
;Collaboration
*2006: Jean Dréjac, ''Comme elle est longue à mourir ma jeunesse'', éditions Christian Pirot, .
*2015: ''Poesie, réel absolu,'' fragments de Novalis (transl. Laurent Margantin), foreword, Poesis, .
*2016: ''Habiter poétiquement le monde'', anthologie-manifeste, Poesis, .
Prizes and distinctions
* 2007: ''Perla'', winner of the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman; nominated for the Prix
France Culture
France Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France. Its programming encompasses a wide variety of features on historical, philosophical, sociopolitical, and scientific themes (including debates, discussions, and documentari ...
-
Télérama
''Télérama'' is a weekly French cultural and television magazine published in Paris, France. The name is a contraction of its earlier title: ''Télévision-Radio-Cinéma''. Fabienne Pascaud is currently managing editor. Ludovic Desautez is dep ...
and the "Bourse de la Découverte" of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco.
* 2009: ''Perla'', winner of the (Québec).
* 2010: ''Une prière pour Nacha'', winner of the .Prix des écrivains croyants 2010
* 2015: ''Novalis et l'âme poétique du monde'', in the final selection of the
France Culture
France Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France. Its programming encompasses a wide variety of features on historical, philosophical, sociopolitical, and scientific themes (including debates, discussions, and documentari ...