Yves Velan was born on August 29th, 1925 in Saint-Quentin (France). It is a French-speaking Switzerland writer.

A " seek fondamentale": thus critic pH. Renaud defines the work of the French-speaking Switzerland novelist Yves Velan.

" Je" , its first novel (1959, the Threshold), received warm welcome at its exit in Paris; criticism raised its innovation, while classifying it in the " New roman". But Velan was going quickly to appear not easily classable, reinventing with each book a new form: fourteen years later, with " The Statue of Condillac retouchée" (The Threshold), difficult novel, it gave the pivot of its work, which consequently seemed a rigorous system in spite of the variety of the forms, and revealed the very strong coherence of the unit. This one was prolonged with " Goulag" software; (1977, Bertil Galland), and a year later with a lampoon (" Against-pouvoir" , B. Galland), kind of shutter theoretical of the work, which defined the ideological and esthetic positions of the writer. This " cycle" romantic will finish with a fourth still new novel, " The Narrator and his Energumène" ; he is necessary to add many publications in reviews to it, as well as a tale, " The Muche" Cat; (1986, Eliane Vernay).

The singularity of the company, Velan formulated it itself: its work is " less one work which an experimentation, which is locatable with traces called livres". At the base of this " expérimentation" , a single question where the individual and the City cross. Roland Barthes wrote already in his " Tests critiques" , in connection with " Je": " All the paradox, all the truth of this book holds so that it is at the same time and by the project even which founds it, Romance policy and language of a subjectivity éperdue". As for the jacket of " Statue" , she informed: " A psychoanalysis whose ideology occupies the détours". Thus, through novels radically different from/to each other, which each time questions the literary fact and renews the romantic kind, Velan returns inlassablement to the same problems: the place of the subject in the company, the relationship with the Other, need for a demanding cultural production, which fights against the crawling standardization and plays a part of perpetual setting in political question and esthetics.

References: Pascal Antonietti, " Yves Velan" , New York/Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005