Novelist Linda Lê has died at the age of 58

The world of literature in mourning.

The French novelist of Vietnamese origin Linda Lê died Monday at the age of 58, we learned from her publisher Stock.

She succumbed to a long illness, the publishing house told AFP.

“Sadness and shock to lose Linda Lê, writer and critic (…) Her articles show a great reader, dialoguing with the texts as with living beings”, wrote on Twitter Pierre Benetti, co-founder of the literary journal

, at which she collaborated.

“Immense sadness to learn of the death this morning of Linda Lê, author of one of the major works of contemporary literature and very great reader,” said Sylvain Bourmeau, director of the journal

, where she also published texts. .

Linda Lê had published in February in Stock

, the meeting in Moscow in 1923 between the Russian poet Ossip Mandelstam and the militant of Vietnamese independence Hô Chi Minh.

A lifetime achievement award

Linda Lê was born in 1963 in Dalat, Vietnam.

In 1969, his family moved to Saigon to flee the war.

At the French high school, she fell in love with Victor Hugo and Balzac.

In 1977, two years after the end of the war, she left Vietnam for France.

She was 23 when her first novel,

(1986), was published, but it was with

(1992) that she felt born into literature, she said.

In 2019, Linda Lê had received the Prince of Monaco prize for all of her work.

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