Jean-Michel Guenassia


Jean-Michel Guenassia is a French writer.
His novel Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes won the Prix Goncourt des lycéens in November 2009.

Biography

A lawyer for six years, Jean-Michel Guenassia lived from his pen by writing screenplays for television. He published a detective novel in 1986, Pour cent millions at , then had some theatre plays performed, including Grand, beau, fort, avec des yeux noirs brûlants..., in 2008 at festival d'Avignon.
His publisher Albin Michel nonetheless presented Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes issued in 2009 as the first novel of a 59-year-old unknown.
In 2012, he published a second novel, La Vie rêvée d'Ernesto G.

Works

''Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes''

Le Club des incorrigibles optimistes was published in 2009 by Éditions Albin Michel.
In this almost 800-page book, Jean-Michel Guenassia had the ambition to write both the "novel of a generation" by carefully reconstructing the 1960s and the "melancholic chronicle of an adolescence". The title is justified by the decisive location of the novel, the back room of a Parisian bistro frequented by Joseph Kessel and Jean-Paul Sartre, where there are men who fled Communism of Eastern countries but who are all "incorrigible optimists".
The novel was hailed by unanimous criticism and found a large audience. It was awarded the Prix Goncourt des lycéens on 9 November 2009 and the 2010 readers Prize of Notre Temps.

Scripts