Paul Guimard

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Paul Guimard (3 March 1921 - 2 May 2004) was a French writer known for combining his passions of writing and the sea. His most famous work was Les Choses de la Vie which was adapted to film by Claude Sautet, with Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli.

Guimard was born at Saint-Mars-la-Jaille (Loire-Atlantique). He married Benoîte Groult. Following a poor performance at the private Saint-Stanislas school of Nantes, he began a career as a journalist. During World War II he reported for the provincial paper L'Echo de la Loire and later had a job as a news editor for another regional daily, L'Ouest-Eclair. He covered French broadcasting in the op-ed pages of Tribune de Paris for four years.

In 1945, he wrote a comedy, Seventh sky, which played briefly. His literary career began in 1956 with the successful, award-winning novel False Friends. His next award winner, Rue du Havre, followed a year later.

In 1960, Guimard wrote the comedy A Best Man with his friend Antoine Blondin in Paris. One year later, he published The Irony of Fate which, like Rue du Havre, illustrates "the determining role of chance in human relationships". The book was the basis for a film by Edouard Molinaro.

Guimard was in charge of a mission for the French President François Mitterrand from Mitterrand's election in 1981 until August 1982. "My only regret is not to have obtained at the time of my passage to the Elysium the creation of an academy of the Sea", Guimard said later, affirming that this experiment "was not directed, but only one long accident".

Guimard was a member of the audio-visual communication authority from 1982 to 1986. He then returned to literature after a decade. He published a short story on Giraudoux, Giraudoux? Hello!... (1988) and novels such as A Combination of Circumstances (1990), The Stone Age (1992), and First Comers (1997).

In 1993, he received an award from the Foundation of Prince Pierre of Monaco for the whole of his career.

Paul Guimard died in Hyères (Var).