大卫·巴洛斯

David Michael Bellos (25 June 1945 – 26 October 2025) was a British academic, translator and biographer. He was the Meredith Howland Pyne professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States, and was the co-founder and first director, from 2007, of its translation and intercultural communication program.

Early life and education

Bellos was born in Rochford, England, on 25 June 1945, and educated in nearby Southend-on-Sea. He earned an undergraduate degree in medieval and modern languages (French and Russian) in 1967 and a D.Phil in French literature in 1971, both at the University of Oxford.

Career

Bellos wrote literary biographies of Romain Gary and Georges Perec, and published work on Honoré de Balzac; and his The Novel of the Century tells the story of the writing of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He composed a biography of the filmmaker Jacques Tati, Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, and appeared in the documentary The Magnificent Tati.

Other works include an introduction to translation studies, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011) and Who Owns This Sentence. A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, written with Alexandre Montagu and published in 2024.

He translated much of the work of Perec into English, including the novel Life: A User's Manual.

Bellos won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations.

Personal life and death

Bellos' marriages to Hélène Roth-Laszlo and Susan Lendrum ended in divorce. At the time of his death he was married to Pascale Voilley Bellos. He was the father of three children (and seven grandchildren), including writer and broadcaster Alex Bellos. David Bellos died at his vacation home in Doussard, France, on 26 October 2025, at the age of 80.

Awards and honours

1988 French-American Foundation prize for translation

1994 Prix Goncourt de la Biographie

2005 Man Booker International Prize, for translation of works by Ismail Kadare

2015 Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

2017 American Library in Paris Book Award winner for The Novel of the Century

2019 Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, Princeton University

Publications

Translations

Georges Perec: Life A User's Manual, 1987 (French-American Foundation's translation prize); new edition, 2008

Georges Perec: W, or the Memory of Childhood, 1988

Georges Perec: Things: A Story of the Sixties, 1990

Georges Perec: 53 Days, 1992

Ismail Kadare: The Pyramid, 1995

Ismail Kadare:The File on H, 1996

Georges Ifrah: A Universal History of Numbers, 2000

Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, 2001

Fred Vargas: Have Mercy On Us All, 2003

Fred Vargas: Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2004

Ismail Kadare: The Successor, 2005

Ismail Kadare: Agamemnon's Daughter, 2006

Ismail Kadare: The Siege, 2008

Hélène Berr: Journal, 2008

Georges Perec: Thoughts of Sorts, 2009

Romain Gary: Hocus Bogus, 2010

Georges Perec: The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise, 2011

Georges Simenon: Pietr the Latvian, 2013

Daniel Anselme: On Leave, 2014

Ismail Kadare: Twilight of the Eastern Gods, 2014

Georges Perec: Portrait of a Man, 2014 (UK), 2015 (USA)

Georges Perec: I Remember, 2014 (USA) (with Philip Terry)

Paul Fournel, Dear Reader, 2014 (UK)

Georges Simenon: The Pitards, 2015

Frédéric Dard, Bird in a Cage2016 (UK)

Delphine Horvilleur, Anti-Semitism Revisited, 2021 (UK)

Maxime Rovere, How To Deal With Idiots (and stop being one yourself), 2021 (UK)

Victor Hugo, Seventeen Ninety-Three, forthcoming 2026 (UK)

Biographies

Georges Perec. A Life in Words, 1993. (Prix Goncourt de la biographie). French edition, 1994. Japanese edition, 2014. Hebrew edition, 2016. New edition in French, 2022; German translation, 2023; Turkish and Chinese translations in progress.

Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, 1999. French edition, 2002; Italian edition, 2022. German edition, 2024

Romain Gary. A Tall Story, Harvill Secker, November 2010

Other books

Balzac Criticism in France, 1850–1900. The Making of a Reputation. Oxford, 1976

La Cousine Bette. A Critical Guide. London, 1981

Old Goriot (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge, 1987. Hebrew translation, Tek Aviv, 1990.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. London and New York, 2011. Paperback edition, 2012.French translation by Daniel Loayza as Le poisson & le bananier, Flammarion, 2012, republished in 2017 as La Traduction dans tous ses états. Spanish translation by Vicente Campos, as Un Pez en la higuera. Ariel, 2012. German translation by Silvia Morawetz as Was macht der Fisch in meinem Ohr?, Eichborn, 2013. Russian translation by Natalia Shahova, Azbuka, 2019. Traditional Chinese translation, Rye Field, Taipei, 2019. Also translated into Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Persian.

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables. London and New York, 2017. Korean edition, 2018. Japanese edition, 2018. Chinese edition, 2019

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs. With Alexandre Montagu. London and New York, 2024. Italian edition 2024. Korean edition 2024. Spanish edition 2025.