达尼埃尔·佩纳克

Daniel Pennac (real name Daniel Pennacchioni, born 1 December 1944 in Casablanca, French Morocco) is a French writer. He received the Prix Renaudot in 2007 for his essay Chagrin d'école.

Biography

Family and education

Daniel Pennacchioni is the fourth and last son of a Corsican and Provençal family. His father was a polytechnicien who became an officer of the colonial army, reaching the rank of general at retirement and his mother, a housewife, was a self-taught reader. His childhood was spent wherever his father was stationed, in Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Algeria, Equatorial Africa), Southeast Asia (Indochina) and France (including La Colle-sur-Loup). His father's love for poetry gave him a taste for books that he quickly devoured in the family library or at school

Career

After spending his childhood traveling around the world between Africa, Europe, and Asia, he studied in Nice and then settled permanently in Paris and started working as a teacher. He began to write for children, including his series "La Saga Malaussène", which tells the story of Benjamin Malaussène, a scapegoat, and his family in Belleville, Paris. In a 1997 piece for Le Monde, Pennac stated that Malaussène's youngest brother, Le Petit, was the son of Jerome Charyn's New York detective, Isaac Sidel.

As a writer, he developed a style. His comic stories were in the contradictions of our time. He achieved success with the Belleville series, novels published in Italy by Feltrinelli between 1991 and 1995.

His writing style can be humorous and imaginative as in "La Saga Malaussène", or scholarly, as exemplified by the essay "Comme un roman." His comic Débauche, written jointly with Jacques Tardi, deals with unemployment.

Literary awards

In 1990 Pennac won the "Prix du Livre Inter" for La petite marchande de prose. His 1984 novel L'œil du loup was translated into English as Eye of the Wolf by Sarah Adams – later known as Sarah Ardizzone – and published by Walker Books in 2002; Adams won the biennial British Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation in 2005 for that work. In 2002 he won the Grinzane Cavour Prize. In 2007 Pennac won the Prix Renaudot for Chagrin d'école. He won the "Grand Prix Metropolis bleu" in 2008 for his complete work. In 2013 he received an honorary degree in pedagogy from the University of Bologna.

In 2023 Pennac was the recipient of the Raymond Chandler Award.