About
Alice Zeniter is a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and director, born in 1986. Her family has Algerian roots, and her writing frequently explores the connections between personal identity, family memory, and the history of France and Algeria. She studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris and began publishing fiction in her twenties. Her earlier novels include Take This Man and Just Before Forgetting. Through her fiction and theatre work, Zeniter examines how historical events shape ordinary lives and how individuals navigate the expectations of society, family, and cultural heritage. Her fifth novel, The Art of Losing (L’Art de perdre), was published in France in 2017. It won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens and the Le Monde Literary Prize, before receiving international recognition in Frank Wynne’s English translation. In 2022, it won the International Dublin Literary Award. Zeniter’s work is known for combining intimate character portraits with broader questions about colonialism, migration, and belonging. She continues to explore how the past lives on in the present—and how understanding inherited histories can help people imagine new ways of defining themselves.
