Jean d'Ormesson

Jean d'Ormesson (Paris, 1925 - Neuilly-sur-Seine, 2017) was a French novelist and writer who worked in the French language. His career spanned literature, journalism and public institutional life, and his visibility as a figure who combined writing with prestigious posts made him one of the most recognisable authors in twentieth-century France.

Born into an aristocratic family, he grew up in Bavaria, Romania and Brazil, where his father served as ambassador. He trained at the Lycée Henri-IV and the École normale supérieure, and became a teacher of philosophy, a discipline that shaped much of his writing. His first novels were not successful, but in 1971 he won the Grand Prix du roman of the Académie française for The Glory of the Empire.

He wrote more than forty books, including novels and plays. Some of his novels depart from conventional forms, and others are largely autobiographical. Taken together, his work carries a philosophical reflection on life, time and faith, shaped by a Catholicism he described as secular rather than atheist. He directed the newspaper Le Figaro from 1974 to 1977 and was elected to the Académie française in 1973, becoming its dean after the death of Claude Lévi-Strauss in 2009. From 1992 to 1997 he presided over the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences at UNESCO.

His legacy lies between the novel and the essay. In 2015, while still alive, his work entered Gallimard's prestigious La Pléiade series, a rare honour that placed him within the French literary canon. He remains associated with conversation and culture as ways of understanding the world.