Marcus Malte

Marcus Malte is a French novelist born in 1967 in Marseille. He began his career writing crime fiction, publishing several novels in the noir tradition before expanding into literary fiction. His work is known for its visceral intensity, its inventive use of language, and its interest in outsiders and those who exist at the margins of society. Malte is the author of more than twenty books, including the crime series featuring Commissaire Ferrand. His novel Garden of Love (2007) won the Grand Prix de littérature policière. He has gradually moved toward a more purely literary register, retaining the energy and narrative drive of genre fiction while expanding his thematic and stylistic ambitions. Le Garçon (The Boy), his 2016 Prix Femina winner, is a sprawling epic following a feral, wordless child born in rural France at the turn of the twentieth century who gradually acquires language and consciousness. The novel traces its protagonist's trajectory from savage innocence through the trenches of World War I, written in language that is itself an exploration of the emergence of voice. Le Garçon is considered one of the most remarkable French novels of the 2010s, a work of extraordinary ambition and formal achievement. Malte is now recognized as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary French literature.