Fatale (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<p>Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942&ndash;1995) was a genre-redefining French crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. Born in Marseille to a family of relatively modest means, Manchette grew up in a southwestern suburb of Paris, where he wrote from an early age. While a student of English literature at the Sorbonne, he contributed articles to the newspaper <i>La Voix Communiste</i> and became active in the national students&rsquo; union. In 1961 he married, and with his wife, M&eacute;lissa began translating American crime fiction&mdash;he would go on to translate the works of such writers as Donald Westlake, Ross Thomas, and Margaret Millar, often for Gallimard&rsquo;s <i>S&eacute;rie noire</i>. Throughout the 1960s Manchette supported himself with various jobs writing television scripts, pornographic screenplays, young-adult books, and film novelizations. In 1971 he published his first novel, a collaboration with Jean-Pierre Bastid, and embarked on his literary career in earnest, producing ten subsequent works over the course of the next two decades and establishing a new genre of French novel, the <i>n&eacute;o-polar</i> (distinguished from traditional detective novel, or <i>polar</i>, by its political engagement and social radicalism). During the 1980s, Manchette published celebrated translations of Alan Moore&rsquo;s <i>Watchmen</i> graphic novels for a <i>bandes-dessin&eacute;e</i> publishing house co-founded by his son, Doug Headline. In addition to <i>Fatale</i>, Manchette&rsquo;s novels <i>Three to Kill </i>and <i>The Prone Gunman</i>, as well as Jacques Tardi&rsquo;s graphic-novel adaptations of them (titled <i>West Coast Blues</i> and <i>Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot</i>, respectively), are available in English.<br> <br> Donald Nicholson-Smith&rsquo;s translations of noir fiction include Manchette&rsquo;s <i>Three to Kill, </i>Thierry Jonquet&rsquo;s <i>Mygale</i> (a.k.a. <i>Tarantula</i>), and (with Alyson Waters) Yasmina Khadra&rsquo;s <i>Cousin K</i>. He has also translated works by Guy Debord, Paco Ignacio Taibo II , Henri Lefebvre, Antonin Artaud, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Born in Manchester, England, he is a longtime resident of New York City.<br><br> Jean Echenoz is a prominent French novelist, many of whose works have been translated into English, among them <i>Chopin&rsquo;s Move</i> (1989), <i>Big Blondes</i> (1995), and most recently <i>Ravel</i> (2008) and<br> <i>Running</i> (2009).<br></p>