François Maspero (born in 1932 with Paris) is a French writer and translator, in the past editor, bookseller and director of reviews.

Biography

Youth

The adolescence of François Maspero is marked by the engagement of its family in the Résistance. His/her father, Henri Maspero, sinologist and professor with the Collège de France, is stopped in 1944 and is died in the Concentration camp of Buchenwald. His/her brother is killed with the combat in 1944. His/her mother, author of studies on the French revolution, is off-set with the camp of Ravensbrück but survives it.

The Maspero Editions

In 1955, at twenty-three years, François Maspero becomes bookseller in the Latin Quarter. He creates in 1959, into full Guerre with Algeria, the Maspero Editions, on the left committed. The starting team is made up, in addition to itself, by Marie-Therese Maugis, then Jean-Philippe Bernigaud and Fanchita Gonzalez Batlle, then joined by Emile Copfermann.

The first two collections, “Free Books” and “Texts with the Support”, are marked by the historical context, with particularly two axes: the war of Algeria and the dispute of the Stalinism of the French Communist party. The books of Frantz Fanon - the Year V of the Algerian revolution , Damnés of the ground , foreword of Jean-Paul Sartre - as of testimonys of opponents to the war of Algeria are prohibited; they are worth many inculpations and also attacks to him. It republishes Paul Nizan, the Watchdogs , Aden Arabia , with also a foreword of Jean-Paul Sartre. It creates the review Partisans which will appear until 1973. The young people unknown ones make their beginnings in the “free Books”: thus Governed Debray in 1967, Bernard-Henri Levy in 1973. Georges Perec publishes his first texts in the review Partisans . In the Sixties, the publications attach an particular importance to the questions of the underdevelopment and neocolonialism, with inter alia the books of Che Guevara.

With the passing of years new collections are added: a series “traditional History” directed by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, where the first books of Jean-Pierre Vernant appear; a series “Pedagogy”, animated inter alia by Emile Copfermann, who publishes the works of Célestin Freinet, of Fernand Deligny and Libres children of Summerhill of A.S. Neill. A “socialist Library” is entrusted to the historian Georges Haupt: one finds there Paul Lafargue, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Alexandra Kollontaï, the Histoire of anarchism of Jean Maitron, of the studies on the Histoire of Communism. In 1965, Louis Althusser entrusts to François Maspero the collection “Theory” where it publishes his works - For Marx , Lire the Capital - and those of his pupils - Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Dominique Lecourt, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière. The collection “Economy and Socialism” is directed by Charles Bettelheim and the “Library of anthropology” by Maurice Godelier. In the collection “Voice”, Fanchita Gonzalez Batlle makes known writers of the whole world: Nazim Hikmet, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Taos Amrouche, El Salvador Espriu, Chris Marker, Castling Dalton, John Shepherd, Victor Serge, John Reed… At the same time begins “the small Maspero collection”, with the pocket format.

After 1968, the bookstore knows a great multitude, but the Maspero editions undergo a crisis due to the convergence of several factors. On the one hand, of new prohibitions works described as “subversive strike”: the review Tricontinentale , the Crimes of Mobutu of Jules Been unemployed, Control on Cameroun of Mongo Beti… the editor is condemned to ruinous fines, custodial sentences and with the deprivation of its civic rights. In addition, the bookstore and the editions are the target of attacks of the extreme-right-hand side and, at the same time, of groups “gauchists” Maoists, who reproach François Maspero for being “commercial permanent of the revolution”. In 1974, this one, exhausted, must sell its bookstore, which closes soon. The editions are saved by a mobilization of authors and readers: the “association of the friends of the Maspero editions” joins together the funds which allow the revival of the activity and the maintenance of a total economic independence.

At the end of the Seventies is born the review from geopolitics Hérodote directed by Yves Lacoste; also open collections centered on the societies' problems - “Despite everything”, directed by Emile Copfermann, “Social struggles” by Gerard Althabe - and on the history. The collection “Acts and Memories of the people”, inaugurated by the Memories of Louise Michel, will shelter in particular the Notebooks of war of Louis Barthas, 1914-1918 and the Récits of Kolyma of Varlam Chalamov. In the collection of pocket “the Discovery” appear accounts of travellers, glances crossed on the world: Christophe Colomb and Ibn Batouta, Bartolomé de Las Put and Mungo Park, Charles Darwin and Teilhard of Chardin. Independently of his editions, François Maspero founds in 1978 the review the Alternative which it will direct until 1984, to call on the “Dissident S” of the countries of “real socialism”.

After the Editions

In 1982, after a new difficult period, it decides to pass the hand to a new team directed by François Gèze. He resigns without allowances and yields his shares to this Frank last for 1 symbolic system. At fifty years, it leaves its editions which take the name of the Discovery and with which it will not have from now on any more any relation.

In 1984, François Maspero publishes the Smile of the cat . This novel which is held summer 1944 at summer 1945 supports largely on an autobiographical experiment. The following, the Fig tree , covers the period 1960-1967, evoking the environment of the Guerre of Algeria and engagement in the liberation movement of Latin America.

It carries out for Radio-France of the reports such as “This winter in China” in 1986. In 1989, it goes on with the photographer Anaïk Frantz a “journey to the long course” on the line B of the Parisian RER, the Passengers of the Roissy-Express train . In 1995, Balkans-transit , in company of the photographer Klavdij Sluban, summarizes five years of voyages between the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea.

The characters of its works of fiction find all in its last book, the Flight of the titmouse , crossed of one half-century and interrogation on the direction of testimony. Its chronicle of the conquest of Algeria, the Honor of Saint-Arnaud , is published in Paris and Algiers. Another historical chronicle, the Shade of a photographer, Kept Taro , revives the dead partner of Robert Capa at 27 years in front of Madrid in 1937.

the Bees and the wasp is more directly autobiographical. About it, the historian Jean-Pierre Vernant writes in the Crossing of the borders : “That the historians lean on these pages. They will see with work an exemplary work there - modest, honest, rigorous - to make emerge from the fogs of the memory the solid base of the events of formerly. ” Since 1990, François Maspero paid, with Klavdij Sluban, for Le Monde , of the chronicles of Bosnia (“walls of Sarajevo” in 1995, “Return in Bosnia” in 1998), of Latin America (reports on Cuba in 1999, on the Caribbean in 2000). One finds some of these texts, like those on Palestine, Gaza, the occupied territories and Israèl, in Transit & Co .

In same time, it translates several authors into French language, in particular John Reed, Alvaro Mutis, Jesus Diaz, Joseph Conrad or Arturo Pérez-Reverte.