Adapted from the podcast, an interview entirely rewritten and enriched with unpublished passages.
Hervé Le Tellier details his oulipian stylistic exercises and willingly shares his remuneration or the advice given by his editor. An intimate and generous conversation by one of the great names in contemporary literature.
He recounts a childhood deprived of love (which he evokes in Toutes les familles heureuses), with a “missing father” and an “emotionally unstable” mother. The solitary child who took refuge in reading became a teenager who loved Romain Gary, Boris Vian and Félix Fénéon.
Hervé Le Tellier is a French writer born on April 21, 1957, and winner of the Prix Goncourt 2020 for L’Anomalie (Gallimard). Trained as a mathematician, then as a journalist—he graduated from the Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris (CFJ class of 1983)—he is a linguist and specialist in constrained literatures. Author of novels, short stories, poetry and theater.
