Mazarine Pingeot

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Mazarine Pingeot at a commemoration of her father's death, January 2006

Mazarine Marie Pingeot (born December 18, 1974), who changed her name in Mazarine Marie Pingeot-Mitterand since 2005, is the daughter of former French president François Mitterrand and his mistress Anne Pingeot.

The existence of this daughter of president Mitterrand was long hidden from the press. 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 is an alumna of the École Normale Supérieure of Fontenay-St Cloud (now named the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines), a public elite college then located in a Parisian suburb.

In 1998, she published her first novel, titled Premier Roman ("First Novel"), which was not highly praised by the critics but was translated in 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" (May 8, 2000).

In 2003, she published a series of literary comments, "They told me who I was" ("they" being the books). She is also a journalist (writing for ELLE magazine between 1999 and 2001) and a television anchor (on a French cable television, Paris Première).

In February 2005, she published her fourth book, Not a Word, a diary about her childhood life as a national secret.

Mazarine is sometimes compared with Delphine Boël, the illegitimate daughter of Albert II of Belgium. Some went as far as nicknaming Delphine Boël the "Mazarine of Belgium" (La "Mazarine de Belgique").

She is a lecturer at the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I. ^[1]