Michel Le Bris on October 31, 2009 in Saint-Denis -
FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP
Founder of the Etonnants Voyageurs festival, he promoted a “world-literature”.
The writer Michel Le Bris, who died in Janzé (Ille-et-Vilaine) at the age of 76 on the night from Friday to Saturday, we learned from his relatives and the president of the council regional Brittany.
"I can confirm that Michel left last night after a long illness," said a relative of the writer.
“It is with deep sadness that I learn of the death of Michel Le Bris.
He who said "my Brittany is an island which contains all the others", understood the force of words, imagination, travel ", declared the president of the regional council of Brittany Loïg Chesnais-Girard in a press release .
A traveling and demanding literature
Born on February 1, 1944 in Plougasnou, near Morlaix (Finistère), into a very modest family, Michel Le Bris, after a detour through a high school in Versailles, graduated from HEC in 1967. He was quickly caught up in May 1968 and the effervescence that will follow.
Director of The Cause of the People in 1970, he found himself in prison for eight months at the Health Department for "offense of opinion".
Alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, he was also one of the founders of Liberation in 1973.
In turn journalist, producer, publisher, Stevenson specialist, passionate about pirates, Michel Le Bris has written numerous books.
But his great work will remain the Etonnants Voyageurs literature festival, subsequently extended to include images.
During these years, under the leadership of its founder, Etonnants Voyageurs has put into practice this traveling and demanding literature.
In parallel to Saint-Malo, specific editions of the festival have emerged, among others, in Bamako, Sarajevo, Haifa, Brazzaville, Missoula (Montana), a melting pot of American “nature writers”, and of course, Port-au-Prince. (Haiti).
The festival, whose name draws its inspiration from a poem by Charles Baudelaire, was to celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2020, an edition canceled due to the health crisis.
Goncourt Prize finalist
In 2008, his novel
La beauté du monde
was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize and in 2017 he published his last novel
Kong
(Grasset).
In 2019, he received “for the love of books and all of his work” the Henri Gal Literature Grand Prize, literary prize from the Institut de France on a proposal from the Académie française.
"Michel Le Bris was endowed with an unusual energy when it came to sharing his vision of a certain literature open to the world", reacted the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, in a press release.
She praised the memory of an "eclectic, committed and passionate personality (who) played a considerable role in the promotion of French-language literature, in France and around the world".
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