« De quoi exactement avais-je fait l’expérience? Je suis bien en peine de le dire. Mais puisque je n’étais pas mort, je devais appartenir à la communauté des deux fois nés. »
Jeune médecin urgentiste, le narrateur traverse une maladie grave. Commence une longue convalescence jusqu’à la guérison. Rescapé d’un tel voyage, comment soigner de nouveau ?
Patrick Autréaux was born in 1968.
While studying medicine and anthropology, he wrote poetry and contemporary art criticism. He collaborates on several catalogues of abstract geometric art collections (museums of Cambrai, Mâcon and Cateau-Cambrésis). He decides to stop his practice of emergency psychiatry in 2006.
After a triptych on the experience of illness, Dans la vallée des larmes, Soigner (Gallimard) and Se survivre (Verdier), he published a novel, Les Irréguliers (Gallimard) and a work of theatre, Le Grand Vivant (Verdier), which premiered in 2015 at the Avignon Festival. Published in 2017, his story La Voix écrite (Verdier) traces a path between medicine and literature. A stage adaptation of his story Le Dedans des choses was premiered at La Rose des vents (Villeneuve d’Asq) in October 2017.
He has been awarded the Villa Yourcenar (2011), the CNL (2010 and 2017), the Paris-Québec scholarship (2012), the Prix Amic de l’Académie française (2012), as well as the Fondation des Treilles author’s residency award (2015) and the Coupleux-Lassalle award (2016).
Author in residence at Boston University in 2018 and 2019, and visiting scholar at MIT in 2018, he created the seminar Through a writer’s eye.
With the publication of the American translation of Dans la vallée des larmes (UIT Books, 2019), Quand la parole attend la nuit (Verdier, 2019) inaugurates a new cycle in his work (selection for the December and Femina prizes).
He lives between Paris and Cambridge (MA, USA).
