Mazarine Pingeot

Mazarine Marie Pingeot (born 18 December 1974) who changed her name to Mazarine Marie Mitterrand Pingeot in November 2016, is a French writer, journalist and professor.

Biography

Pingeot is the daughter of former French president François Mitterrand and his mistress Anne Pingeot. She is said to be named after the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest library in France, because of her parents' love for books. She could also be named after cardinal Mazarin, who was admired by her father. The existence of this daughter of president Mitterrand was long hidden from the press but was almost revealed by the French writer Jean-Edern Hallier. Ensuring confidentiality about it was one of the motivations behind some of the illegal wiretapping that Mitterrand ordered under the guise of fighting terrorism.

She was a student first at the elite lycée Henri-IV in Paris and then at the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (now named the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), a highly prestigious school. In 1997 she passed the '' agrégation de philosophie'', and then briefly started - but did not complete - a Ph.D. thesis on the philosopher Spinoza, working as a teaching assistant at the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I.

She was also a journalist (writing for ''Elle'' between 1999 and 2001) and a television anchor (on a French cable television channel, Paris Première).

Works

In 1998, she published her first novel, titled ''Premier Roman'' ("First Novel"), which was not highly praised by critics but was translated into many languages, including English. In 2000 she published ''Zeyn or the Reconquest'', for which Charles Bremner of ''The Times'' wrote "If there was a prize for braving the ''ridicule'' of critics, it would go to Mazarine Pingeot" (8 May 2000). In 2003, she published a series of literary comments, "They told me who I was" ("they" being the books). In February 2005, she published her fourth book, ''Not a Word'', a diary about her childhood life as a national secret. In 2007 she published her fifth book, ''Le Cimetière des poupées'' (The Cemetery of the Dolls), a novel about a woman who kills her baby and puts it in a freezer.

In 2019, Mitterrand Pingeot published a novel titled ''Se taire'' ("Keeping quiet") about a female photographer raped by a prominent politician. Commentators have drawn parallels with the accusations by her niece Pascale Mitterrand against the French politician Nicolas Hulot, which accusations had been dismissed by the French authorities.
Mitterrand Pingeot's 2020 novel ''Et la peur continue'' ("And the fear is constant") follows a woman who lives in a constant state of fear caused by the everyday pressures she experiences in her professional and personal life.

Family

She has one son, born 2005 and two daughters, born 2007 and 2009 with her former partner Mohamed Ulad-Mohand, a film director.

References

External links

Mazarine Pingeot
on site of TimesOnline

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pingeot, Mazarine
1974 births
Living people
Writers from Avignon
20th-century French novelists
21st-century French novelists
21st-century French journalists
French women journalists
ENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud-Lyon alumni
University of Provence alumni
Lycée Henri-IV alumni
Children of national leaders of France
21st-century French women writers
20th-century French women writers
François Mitterrand
Mitterrand family