Dominique Barbéris
Dominique Barbéris is a French novelist, author of literary studies and university professor, specializing in stylistics and writing workshops.
Biography
Born in 1958 in Cameroon into a French family of Nantes. Dominique Barberis studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne University in Paris after her childhood in Nantes, then in Brussels. She began teaching literature at a high school in Boulogne-Billancourt before joining an insurance company as head of communications. She later taught in several other schools. Then she was appointed professor at the University of Paris IV in Foreign languages and Applied foreign languages department, and then at the French language department in which she runs stylistic courses and novel writing workshops.Novelist
Author of 11 novels and stories, she devotes a large part of her activity to writing.Her writing has been widely praised by the French press
Her eleventh novel, Une façon d'aimer received in 2023 the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, one of the major French literary prizes Madeleine, a discreet and melancholic beauty from the 1950s who resembles the French actress Michèle Morgan, leaves her native Brittany to follow her husband to Cameroon and finds herself immersed in a foreign, violent, and magnificent world. In Douala, during a ball at the Delegation, she falls in love with Yves Prigent, half-administrator, half-adventurer. But decolonization is underway and announces the end of the game...
Her tenth novel, Un dimanche à Ville d'Avray, was translated under the name A Sunday in Ville-d'Avray in the United States by John Cullen for Other Press and the United Kingdom by Daunt Books : in the apparently peaceful of Paris suburb town Ville-d'Avray, two sisters get closer one Sunday, and one confides in the other and reveals her meeting with a man... The translated novel was noticed by the press and literary festivals. This novel's title recalls that of a film by Serge Bourguignon, Cybèle ou les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray, Oscar for best foreign film in the United States in 1963.
Her novel Les Kanourous was adapted for cinema in 2005 in France by director Anne Fontaine under the name Entre ses mains : the melancholic kangaroos of the Jardin des Plantes zoo of Paris do not look you in the face. The young woman we meet in Dominique Barbéris novel thinks they don't dare. “And suddenly I said to myself that they must not have looked the murderer in the face either; but certainly, they had seen it.” Three murders take place, each time in the area where she lives, and as she herself is a young woman alone, these tragedies concern her. This novel, a kind of atmospheric Parisian thriller, has been compared to Hitchcock.
His first and tenth novel were published by Arlea, and the others by Editions Gallimard, one of the leading French book publishers.
It has been translated in total in 7 countries
University professor
Leading the Sorbonne University novel writing workshops, she published with the cultural service, at Éditions Sillage, 14 opus of Prose en Sorbonne, Writing workshops by Dominique Barbéris, corresponding, each year, to the best texts produced by her students.Member of the reading committee of the Book review Europe, she has published numerous critical articles, literary studies and prefaces in French at Editions Gallimard.
Knight of the Legion of Honor in 2008.
Literature
La Ville, Arléa, 1996 and pocket edition 2009L'Heure exquise, Éditions Gallimard, « L'Arpenteur » collection, 1998 – Prix Marianne Le Temps des dieux, Éditions Gallimard, « L'Arpenteur » collection, 2000Les Kangourous, Éditions Gallimard, « L'Arpenteur » collection, 2002 – adapté à l’écran en 2005 par Anne Fontaine sous le titre Entre ses mains.Ce qui s’enfuit, Éditions Gallimard, « L'Arpenteur » collection, 2005Quelque chose à cacher, Éditions Gallimard, « Folio » pocket edition and « Blanche » collection, 2007 – finalist of Prix Femina 2007, Prix des Deux Magots 2008 et Prix de la Ville de Nantes, 2008Beau Rivage, Éditions Gallimard, « Blanche » collection, 2010La Vie en marge, Éditions Gallimard, « Blanche » collection, 2014L'Année de l'éducation sentimentale, Éditions Gallimard, « Blanche » collection, 2018 – Prix Jean-Freustié 2018.Un dimanche à Ville-d'Avray, Arléa, « La rencontre » Collection, 2019 and Éditions Gallimard, « Folio » pocket edition 2021.Une façon d'aimer, Éditions Gallimard,« Blanche » collection, 2023, Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française 2023.Studies and prefaces
- Marcel Proust, Un amour de Swann, Nathan, coll. « Balises », 1990.Un roi sans divertissement : introduction to the work of Jean Giono, Nathan, coll. « Balises », 1991.Langue et littérature : anthologie XIXe et XXe siècle, 1992.Chateaubriand, Nathan, coll. « Balises », 1994.
- Marguerite Duras, Moderato cantabile / L'Amant, Nathan, coll. « Balises », 1995.
- Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes, preface, Imprimerie nationale, coll. « La Salamandre », 1996.
- « La parataxe dans l’écriture d'Annie Ernaux; Pour une écriture photographique du réel », revue Tra-jectoires n°3, 2006.
- Gustave Flaubert, Voyages, Arléa, coll. « Arléa-poche », 2007.
- « Je suis aussi... », préface pour le recueil de Carlos Alvarado Larroucau, L'Harmattan, coll. « Poètes des cinq continents », 2009.
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, preface, Editions Gallimard, Coll. « Folio », 2012.
- Charles Dickens, Contes de Noël, preface, Editions Gallimard, coll. « Folio », 2012.
- Louise de Vilmorin, Madame de..., Dominique Barbéris relit Madame de, Revue critique de fixxion francaise contemporaine, 2012.
- Jean-Pierre Richard : « La chair du monde », Revue Europe, 2019.
- Cahier de l'Herne Annie Ernaux, « Sur le style de La Place », l'Herne, 2022.
- Critiques libres : « Karel Schoeman, Le jardin céleste '' Acte Sud», La Nouvelle Revue Française, 2023.