Ferrier has published several novels and essays, whose interdisciplinary work includes several books on Japan, which has become a standard reference in the field. His first novel, Tokyo, petits portraits de l’aube, Gallimard, 2004, has been awarded the Prix Littéraire de l’Asie 2005. His novel Sympathie pour le Fantôme portrays multiple voices and embraces the contradictions and complexity of French national identity. It has been awarded the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée. His book about Fukushima is a major study on the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear accident, that has roused the interest of writers and philosophers like Philippe Sollers and Jean-Luc Nancy. Ferrier has also been awarded the 2012 Prix Edouard Glissant.
Awards and honours
Michaël Ferrier was shortlisted three times for the Prix Femina and three times for the Prix Décembre.
Scrabble : une enfance tchadienne, Mercure de France, Collection Traits et Portraits, 2019
Mémoires d'Outre-Mer, Gallimard, 2015 = Over Seas of Memory, translated by Martin Munro, foreword by Patrick Chamoiseau, Nebraska University Press, 2019
Le Goût de Tokyo, anthology, Mercure de France, 2008
Japon: la Barrière des rencontres, Ed. Cécile Defaut, 2009
Penser avec Fukushima, Nantes, Editions nouvelles Cécile Defaut, 2016
Naufrage, Gallimard, Collection Tracts, 2020
;Screenplay
Le monde après Fukushima, coproduction Arte/Kami Productions
Terres nucléaires, une histoire du plutonium, coproduction Arte France/Seconde Vague Productions/Kami Productions
Notre ami l'atome, coproduction Arte France/Radio Télévision Suisse/Kami Productions
;In english
« Creole Japan; or, the Vagaries of Creolization », Small Axe, vol 14, number 3 33, Durham, Duke University Press, 2010
A special issue about japanese photography in art press, the international review of contemporary art, contains two interviews with japanese photographers: « Chihiro Minato: Only Once » and « Japanese photography: In Tokyo with Araki », art press, number 353, 2009
« Setouchi. Japan's Festival of the Inland Sea », art press, number 371, 2010
« Art, eroticism and cannibalism in Japan », art press2, number 20, 2011
« Visualizing the Impossible: Art after Fukushima», art press, number 423, 2015
« Nature and Creation in Japanese Aesthetics », Wabi Sabi Shima, Of the Aesthetics of Perfection and Chaos in the Japanese Archipelago, Thalie Art Foundation editions, 2015
« France-Japan: The Coral Writers », Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, Volume 21, 2017 - Issue 1: France-Asia, p. 8-27.