Bernard Clavel

Biography

Bernard Clavel was born on May 29th, 1923 with Lons-the-Salt maker, at the bottom of a large garden where his father former baker and his mother florist pained.

He leaves the school at fourteen years and exerts several trades: apprentice pastrycook, workman. After the war, he works with the Social security. He becomes then bookbinder then journalist.

He can entirely devote himself to the writing only starting from 1964.

Bernard Clavel moved forty times between Dole, Lyon, Annecy, Vernaison, Chelles, Brunoy, Castle-Trawl-net, Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, the Quebec, Paris, the Portugal, Saint-Rémy-of-Provence, the Ireland or the Bordelais. He in addition spent many years of his life to the locality Courbatière, which belongs to the commune of Courmangoux in the department of Ain. He also travelled in Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, in India and with the Bangladesh. He currently lives in Savoy.

In 1968, it obtains the Goncourt Price for the Fruits of the winter . He is elected member of the Académie Goncourt in 1971, then resigns in 1977.

He is member of the committee of sponsorship of the French Coordination for the Decade of the culture of peace and non-violence.

He supports, since his creation in 2001, the funds associative Non-Violence XXI.

Its work

Bernard Clavel is one of most faithful representing Roman soil. He draws his inspiration from his life and an acute observation of the world which surrounds it. He likes to describe the hard existences and its characters often evolve/move in rural environments or savages.

Great patience is an autobiographical fresco in which it recalls its training under the crook of a tyrannical and unjust owner. The Second world war will upset its existence. In the last work of this series, it evokes in a poignant way death of his parents.

The fresco the Kingdom of north is the consequence of a double passion: that which it carries to his second wife (Josette Pratte, écrivaine Québécois) and to Quebec, whose climate and the tormented geography are used for wonder its need for hard and imposing decorations. This series reports the life of Canadian pioneers who little by little, try to adapt the ground of the Canadian far North.

the Columns of the sky is a series in which he tells the Franche-Comté with the catches with the plague and the war.

Bernard Clavel is a prolific writer. He wrote more than one hundred of works (not all available unfortunately). If these large frescos marked the spirits, it is the same of certain of its works: the Spaniard , Malataverne …

The funds of personal records of Bernard Clavel and Josette Pratte is lodged and preserved with the cantonal and university Bibliothèque of Lausanne (BCU), in Suisse.

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