| Douglas Kennedy | |
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| Born | 1955 Manhattan, New York |
| Occupation | novelist, travel writer |
| Language | English, French |
| Genres | fiction |
| Notable work(s) | The Big Picture, The Pursuit of Happiness |
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| Signature | |
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www.douglas-kennedy.com |
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Douglas Kennedy is an American novelist.
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Douglas Kennedy was born in Manhattan in 1955, the son of a commodities broker and a production assistant at NBC. He was educated at The Collegiate School and graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1976. He also spent a year studying at Trinity College Dublin. "I was a history major," Kennedy explained. "Retrospectively, I think the history major provides much better training for a novelist. So much of what I do in my own fiction is observational; is looking at behavior. By studying human history you really see how human folly endlessly repeats itself. In my work—in whatever form it takes—I am very much grappling with what it means to be American in this way."[1]
In 1977, he returned to Dublin and started a co-operative theatre company with a friend. He was later hired to run the Abbey Theatre's second house, The Peacock. At the age of 28, he resigned from The Peacock to write full time. After several radio plays for the BBC and one stage play, he decided to switch directions and wrote his first book, a narrative account of his travels in Egypt called Beyond the Pyramids, which published in 1988. Kennedy and his wife moved to London that year, where Kennedy expanded his journalistic work, and wrote for The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Listener, The New Statesman, and the British editions of Esquire and GQ.
His 10 novels have been translated in 22 countries. His latest novel, The Moment], to be published in paperback with Atria (a division of Simon and Schuster) in November, 2011, recently became a #1 Bestseller in France, as did his earlier novel, Leaving the World. His novels are often written in European landscapes. He received the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007. In November 2009, he received the first “Grand Prix du Figaro,” awarded by the newspaper Le Figaro.
Kennedy has two children, Max and Amelia. He divides his time between London, Paris, Berlin and Maine.
The Dead Heart was the basis of the 1997 film Welcome to Woop Woop. Kennedy’s second novel, The Big Picture, a New York Times Bestseller, was a dark exploration of identity and self- entrapment set in Connecticut’s suburbs. It was adapted for film (L'Homme Qui Voulait Vivre Sa Vie) and released in theaters in 2010, starring Romain Duris and Catherine Deneuve.
The Woman in the Fifth, the story of a beleaguered professor who falls in love with a strange woman who isn’t the person she seems, was also adapted into film, and was released release in France in November 2011, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas