Sylvie Germain

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Sylvie Germain, French author, born in Châteauroux in 1954. She remained there for eighteen months. During her childhood, with her three brothers and sisters, she moved from city to city, depending on the assignments her sub-prefect father received.

[edit] Work

In 1976 she was awarded a Master of Philosophy by the Sorbonne, Paris, and in 1978 went on to complete an MA in philosophy and aesthetics at Université de Paris X - Nanterre. There, too, she completed a doctorate in philosophy in 1981. During those years she studied with a teacher she admires, Emmanuel Levinas, and her work focussed on the notion of asceticism in Christian mysticism.

While employed by the Ministry of Culture in Paris, where she remained between 1981 and 1986, she produced her first novel, Le Livre des Nuits in 1985. It won six French Literary Prizes as well as the Scott Moncrieff Translations Prize in English. The reception of the book established her as a significnt new author.

From Paris she moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where, from 1987 to 1993, she taught philosophy at the French School and continued to write. 1989 saw the publication of Jours de Colère, Days of Anger, which won the Prix Femina.

In 1993, Sylvie Germain returned to France. She then lived between Paris and La Rochelle. But Prague continued to inspire her, a theme especially apparent in the novel Immensités. Since 1994 she has been involved only in literary activities.

In 1999, Sylvie Germain produced a biography focusing on the life of Etty Hillesum, the young Dutch Jewish woman who died at Auschwitz in November 1943, leaving behind a journal. Germain explored her spiritual life and, a year later, she published several books in various genres: a travelogue, a spiritual text and a photo album. In 2002 she published a new novel, The Song of Mal-magnets.

Her most recent novel Magnus was awarded the 2005 Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (a prize voted on by French high school students).

In addition to novels, she has published essays on other artists (Vermeer: Patience et songe de lumière, 1993, for example), spiritual meditations (Les Echos du Silence) and a children's book (L'Encre du Poulpe). Most of her novels have been translated into English.