Villa Gillet - Rhône-Alpes - recherches contemporaines

Agnès Desarthe was born in Paris in 1966. Formerly a student at the École Normale Supérieure and trained as an English-teacher, she began her career as a translator before publishing novels for teenagers. She has also written six novels for adults, such as Quelques minutes de bonheur absolu (L’Olivier, 1993 – Seuil, 2007), Mangez-moi (L’Olivier, 2006) and, most recently, Le remplaçant (L’Olivier, 2009). This book, intended to be the story of Janusz Korczak, a Polish educator who directed a number of orphanages during the Second World War, actually recounts the tale of another great man, the second husband of her grandmother. It is this ‘stand-in’, the mysterious story-teller who becomes the real subject of the novel.