PANCRAZI, Jean-Noël 1949–

PERSONAL: Born 1949, in Algeria; immigrated to France, 1962.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Éditions Gallimard, 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin, 75328, Paris, France.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Prix Médicis, 1990, for Vagabond Winter; Prix Jean Freustié, 1999, for Long séjour.

WRITINGS:

La mémoire brûlée (novel; title means "Burnt Memories"), Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1979.

Lalibela, ou, La mort nomade (novel), Éditions Ramsey (Paris, France), 1981.

L'heure des adieux (novel; title means "Time to Say Goodbye"), Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), 1985.

Le passage des princes (novel; title means "The Path of Princes"), Éditions Ramsey (Paris, France), 1988.

Les quartiers d'hiver (novel), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 1990, translated by James Kirkup as Vagabond Winter, Quartet Books (London, England), 1992.

Le silence des passions (novel; title means "Silence of Passions"), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 1993.

Madame Arnoul (novel), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 1995.

Long séjour (novel), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 1998.

(With Raymond Despardon) Corse (travel), Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), 2000.

Renée Camps (novel), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 2001.

Tout est passé si vite (novel), Éditions Gallimard (Paris, France), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: A Frenchman who was born in Algeria and forced to move to France after that country's eight-year war for independence from France ended in 1962, Jean-Noël Pancrazi has mined his dual heritage, writing a handful of novels that contain what reviewers have viewed as autobiographical elements. These works include such early novels as L'heure des adieux and Le passage des princes. In the former, an elderly poet describes his love for the island home from which he is forced to depart because of a violent revolution, while in the latter, which is also told in first-person narration, a young man looks for peace from the pain caused by loving. Reviewing Le passage des princes for French Review, Joseph Labat remarked that "the most moving passages are those in which the narrator tells of his parents' final days in Algeria before their forced removal to France." Labat also saw the work as the author's manifesto of his belief in using the imagination to make existence tenable, and of becoming, as the title suggests, a "prince" of the heart by knowing oneself.

Among Pancrazi's best-known works are the prizewinning novels Les quartiers d'hiver—translated into English as Vagabond Winter—which is about a famous homosexual gatheringplace in Paris, and Long séjour, which is about a man who repeatedly visits a father who is confined to a mental institution.

In Vagabond Winter, which Spectator reviewer Anita Brookner called "sumptuously but vaguely written," Pancrazi describes the regulars at the Parisian bar-restaurant Le Vagabond. Suffering from AIDS, the regulars disappear one by one, like melting snowflakes. Several reviewers commented on the sensitivity with which Pancrazi handles his subject matter. James Kirkup, Pancrazi's translator, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that "Pancrazi treats his frivolous-grim theme with a virtuoso lightness and an all-saving wit." London Observer reviewer Phil Hogan, who also noted the work's "wit and warmth," took particular note of the narrator's mother, a character who is "exquisitely drawn." Labat remarked on affinities between Vagabond Winter and Marcel Proust's famous novel Remembrance of Things Past and Albert Camus's novel The Fall, noting the use of first-person stream-of-consciousness narration and the bar-restaurant locale, respectively. Labat, who also noted Pancrazi's use of metaphors and poetic prose, commented that Vagabond Winter "masterfully illustrates that the novel is the only genre that can encompass the reality of life."

Pancrazi continued to portray Algeria and its piedsnoir, or Algerian-born French population, in Madame Arnoul. This novel is named for one of its main characters, an Alsatian woman who comes to Algeria before the war for independence. The child narrator, a boy, tells readers about the war that breaks out on November 1, 1954, and its effects on both indigenous Algerians and French colonizers alike. His mother, the school teacher Mrs. Arnoul, finds she must combat racism in her own way. Despite their efforts to coexist, however, all the French citizens are eventually repatriated to France at war's end. Alawa Toumi described the finale in French Review as a fitting conclusion to a "very beautiful novel."

According to Nina Ekstein, also writing in French Review, Pancrazi's second prize-winning novel, Long séjour, is "a short, delicate meander through the narrator's memories of his father." More of a prose poem than a novel, it is dominated by several images: the Algeria that the family was forced to leave and the institutionalization of the father, who cannot cope with this displacement. The narrative moves between the childhood memories of the son and his visits to his father, who finally has a moment of lucidity before dying. "This is a touching portrait of a brave, uncomplaining man," wrote Ekstein, who added that, "suffused with nostalgia, memory, and regret, Long séjour is a beautifully written work by an author who takes obvious pleasure in his relationship to language."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 1991, review of Vagabond Winter, p. 128.

French Review, April, 1990, Joseph Labat, review of Le passage des princes, pp. 896-897; April, 1992, Joseph Labat, review of Les quartiers d'hiver, p. 858; December, 1996, Alawa Toumi, review of Madame Arnoul, pp. 353-354; December, 1999, Nina Ekstein, review of Long séjour, pp. 383-384.

Observer (London, England), March 8, 1992, Phil Hogan, review of Vagabond Winter, p. 63.

Spectator (London, England), January 5, 1991, Anita Brookner, review of Vagabond Winter, pp. 27-28.

Times Literary Supplement, February 15, 1991, James Kirkup, "Bar-barbs," review of Vagabond Winter, p. 19.

World Literature Today, winter, 1986, S. Villani, review of L'heure des adieux, p. 73.