Prévost, Guillaume 1964-

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Prévost, Guillaume 1964-

Personal

Born 1964, in France; married; children: one son, one daughter. Hobbies and other interests: Video games, judo, computer technology.

Addresses

Home—Versailles, France.

Career

Educator and author. University du Havre, Le Havre, France, instructor in history.

Writings

YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS

Livre du temps: la pierre sculptée, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2006, translated by William Rodarmor as The Book of Time, Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2007.

Sept piéces, translated by William Rodarmor as The Gate of Days: The Book of Time II, Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2008.

Author's work has also been translated into German.

OTHER

Les sept crimes de Rome (fiction), Nil Editions (France), 2000.

Also author of two adult thriller novels published in France: L'assassin et le prophète and Le mystère de la chambre obscure.

Adaptations

The "Book of Time" novels were adapted for audiobook by Random House Audio.

Sidelights

In addition to teaching history at a university in his native France, Guillaume Prévost is also a young-adult novelist. His fantasy trilogy "The Book of Time" includes the novels The Book of Time and The Gate of Days: The Book of Time II, both of which were originally published in France and were inspired by Prévost's lifelong interest in history and reading.

In The Book of Time readers meet fourteen-year-old Sam Faulkner, a boy who has lived with his grandparents ever since his mother was killed in a car accident. Sam's father, Allan, is an antiquarian book dealer. When Allan goes missing, the boy searches his father's bookshop for clues and discovers a secret stone statue that transports him back through time. Soon he is helping to defend Iona from Viking hoards, sleuthing in ancient Egypt in search of a murderer, visiting medieval Belgium, warning residents of pre-Vesuvius Pompeii, and aiding French troops on the front lines during World War I. Aided by his cousin, twelve-year-old Lily, who communicates with him via text-messaging, Sam assists those living in each time period he visits, making a small but crucial mark on history before departing for other eras. He also continues to track his missing father, and in The Gate of Days he learns that the bookseller is being held by the evil Vlad the Impaler. Vlad is the same fifteenth-century man who served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Sam realizes that the longer his father is trapped in Vlad's castle, the less likely he is to remain alive. To release his father, the teen must quickly travel through time to collect the seven guide coins required to direct the statue in sending him to Vlad's castle.

Reviewing The Book of Time in Horn Book, Vicky Smith noted that "Prévost keeps the plot moving along at a breakneck pace, giving both Sam and the reader scant moments to catch their breath between time jumps" in his clue-studded tale. The story's "well-drawn characters and a swiftly moving story" keep readers mesmerized, wrote Carolyn Phelan in Booklist, the critic predicting that "readers will be scrambling for the second book of the planned trilogy." Calling The Book of Time "remarkably inventive," Kliatt contributor Cara Chancellor added that "Prévost's real triumph is his stunning historical fiction, which convincingly transports readers" along the same path taken by the novel's adventurous young protagonist.

Discussing his work as a teacher of history, Prévost explained in an interview for Kidsread.com: "When talking with my students, I tried to stress the human side of history, to help them understand, for example, that the Greeks who invented democracy in Athens were in some ways different from us, but in many ways, very similar. That's what makes them close to us, and important and useful to know. They still have things to tell us today. And that approach isn't so different from that of The Book of Time."