Maylis de Kerangal


Maylis de Kerangal is a French author. Her novels deeply explore people in their work lives. She has won many awards for her work, and her novels have been published in several languages. Two have been adapted as films.

Life and career

Raised in Le Havre, Maylis de Kerangal studied history and philosophy in Rouen and Paris. She worked at Paris-based Éditions Gallimard in the children and youth department from 1991 to 1996, then travelled in the United States. After her return, she did graduate work at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.
De Kerangal wrote her first novel in 2000, and then became a full-time writer. Her celebrated novel, Birth of a Bridge presents a literary saga of a handful of men and women who are charged with building a bridge somewhere in a mythical California. Birth of a Bridge was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. It was awarded both the Prix Médicis in 2010 and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori in 2014, and has been translated into several languages worldwide.
Mend the Living, translated by Jessica Moore and published in the UK, won the Prix Orange du Livre and the Grand prix RTL-Lire in France, and the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize.
Mend the Living was adapted for the stage and produced at the theatre festival in Avignon. It received positive reviews for its intimate look at the realities and philosophical questioning around organ donation. It was adapted as the film Heal the Living. A second English-language translation of the novel by Sam Taylor, entitled The Heart, was published in the US in 2016.
Eastbound was named a best book of 2023 by ''The New York Times.''

Works

  • Je marche sous un ciel de traîne
  • La Vie voyageuse
  • Ni fleurs ni couronnes
  • Dans les rapides
  • Corniche Kennedy
  • Naissance d'un pont
  • *Birth of a Bridge, trans. Jessica Moore
  • Tangente vers l'est
  • *Eastbound, trans. Jessica Moore
  • Réparer les vivants. Paris: Éditions Verticales, 2013.
  • *Mend the Living, trans. Jessica Moore
  • *The Heart, trans. Sam Taylor
  • À ce stade de la nuit
  • Un chemin de tables
  • *The Cook, trans. Sam Taylor
  • Un monde à portée de main,. Paris: Éditions Verticales, 2018.
  • *Painting Time, trans. Jessica Moore
  • Kiruna
  • Pour que droits et dignité ne s'arrêtent pas au pied des murs
  • Canoës
  • *Canoes, trans. Jessica Moore
  • Seyvoz, with Joy Sorman
  • Un archipel. Fiction, récits, essais
  • ''Jour de ressac''

Awards and honours