He spent his childhood in Villerville, a small town east of
Deauville.
An associate professor of letters, he received the
Prix Goncourt in 1976, 29 years old, for his fourth novel, Les Flamboyants ("The Flasher").[1]
He has written extensively on Africa, where he undertook a cooperative mission.[2]
He is professor of French at the
Lycée Évariste Galois in
Sartrouville.
Grainville spent his childhood in
Normandy, regularly going to hunt and poach with his father,[4] businessman and mayor of
Villerville. He attended the André Maurois lycee in
Deauville, then Malherbe in
Caen, before winning admission to his higher education at the
Lycée Henri-IV and to the Sorbonne where he prepared for his
civil service competitive examination. At the age of 19 years Grainville wrote his first manuscript, then at age 25 he published his first
novelThe Fleece,[5] which was immediately accepted by
Gallimard.[6] Just before dying,
Henry de Montherlant predicted him great future and lauded his specific style. His next novel The Edge failed the Goncourt in 1973, in the fifth tour against The ogre by
Jacques Chessex,[7] to the great displeasure of
Michel Tournier who supported it in jury.[8]
Themes
Fantasy
Having compared with
Jean Giono[9] for his wild novels linked to elements and to
Louis-Ferdinand Céline for his "verbal excess",[10] Grainville distanced himself from this inheritance by a
fantastique and
dream which impregnates his work: the mythological
Amazon (La Diane rousse), return to original animality (The Shadow of the animal), secrets and conspiracies[11] (The black Fortresses), the narrator observer of
underworld (The eternal Tyrant), or the animals who manage the destiny of men (Light of the rat, The Kiss of the octopus). Writer of the two centuries, following the example of
Huysmans but having digested
Proust,[12]Nouveau roman and "the academic ressassements of some realism", according to
Michel Tournier Grainville opened a "new way" which led to the 21st century.
Painting
Grainville always enjoyed
painting, which was his inspiration.[13]
1995 : La Cuisinière normande by Paul Touquet, under direction of Claude Tchou, éditions du Seuil.
2004 : Bethsabée by
Torgny Lindgren, Babel collection, Actes Sud.
2012 : Pourquoi aimez-vous "Les Travailleurs de la mer"?, interview in
Les travailleurs de la mer with
Victor Hugo, édition mise à jour en 2012, Garnier Frères collection
Radio dramas
1975 : L'Assaut, réalisation d'Henri Soubeyran pour
France Culture.
^in a letter addressed to the author on September 12, 1972, published on the occasion of
Prix Goncourt for
The Flamboyants in Le Monde dated from November 17th 1976, p. 31.
^Dictionnaire des Ecrivains de langue française (
Jean-Pierre de Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty et
Alain Rey), comparaisons et citation de Jean-Pierre Damour, éditions Larousse, 2001.
Jeanne Polton, L'écriture de la sensualité dans le roman contemporain (
Duras, Grainville,
Simon,
Sollers), Lille, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1999.
Rachel Edwards, Myth and the Fiction of
Michel Tournier and Patrick Grainville, Lewiston, New York, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, 2000.
Alain-Philippe Durand, Un monde techno : Nouveaux espaces électroniques dans le roman français des années 1980-1990, Berlin, Weidler Buchverlag, 2004.
Marie-Odile Lainé, Villerville,
une enfance en féerie dans Balade en
Calvados, sur les pas des écrivains, Paris, Éditions Alexandrines, 2004 et, sous le titre Le Calvados des Ecrivains, 2014.
Charlotte Baker, Enduring Negativity : Representations of Albinism in the Novels of Didier Destremau, Patrick Grainville and
Williams Sassine, Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, Peter Lang, 2011.
Dauda Yillah, 'Patrick Grainville's Black African World: Dismantling or Bolstering Cultural Binarisms?’, Nottingham French Studies, 58,1 (2019), pp. 82–101.
Quotations (anthologies and trials)
Brève histoire des fesses, par Jean-Luc Hennig, Zulma, 1995.