Daniel Pennac
Biography
Daniel Pennac was born Daniel Pennacchioni in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944, shortly after Rick’s Café changed hands. His father was in the army, so he spent his youth in Africa and South-East Asia before moving to Nice. His early career was as a teacher. He first wrote children’s fiction but, after a trip to Brazil, he started his series of offbeat novels about the professional scapegoat, Benjamin Malaussène, with Au bonheur des ogres (The Scapegoat) and went on to write several others in the same series. They are typified by a streetwise playfulness, lots of slang, a totally multicultural vision of France, a love of family and a humorous contempt for the stuffy bureaucrat.
Other sites
Daniel Pennac
Malaussène
Daniel Pennac – 10 Inalienable Rights of the Reader
Daniel Pennac (in French)
Bibliography
1973 Le Service militaire au service de qui? (essay)
1979 Père Noël (with Tudor Eliad) (novel)
1980 Le grand Rex (illustrated)
1982 Cabot caboche (Dog) (children’s)
1984 L’oeil du loup (Eye of the Wolf) (children’s)
1985 Au bonheur des ogres (The Scapegoat) (Malaussène saga)
1987 La fée carabine (The Fairy Gunmother) (Malaussène saga)
1989 La petite marchande de prose (Write to Kill) (Malaussène saga)
1991 Le sens de la houppelande (illustrated)
1991 Les Grandes Vacances (photos by Robert Doisneau with Pennac’s commentary)
1992 Kamo et moi (children’s)
1992 Kamo, l’agnece Babel (children’s)
1992 L’évasion de Kamo (Kamo’s Escape) (children’s)
1992 Comme un roman (Better than Life; Reads Like a Novel) (literary criticism)
1993 Sang pour sang, le réveil des vampires (with Jean Marigny)
1993 Kamo, l’idée du siècle (children’s)
1993 La Vie de famille (photos by Robert Doisneau with Pennac’s commentary)
1994 Miro: Le tour du ciel (children’s)
1995 Monsieur Malaussène (Monsieur Malaussène) (Malaussène saga)
1996 Vercors d’en haut; La réserve naturelle des Hauts Plateaux (illustrated)
1996 Des Chrétiens et des maures (Malaussène saga)
1996 Monsieur Malaussène au théâtre (Malaussène saga)
1997 Messieurs les enfants (novel)
1997 Qu’est-ce que tu attends, Marie? (children’s)
1998 Sahara (children’s)
1999 Aux fruits de la passion (Passion Fruit) (Malaussène saga)
1999 La Débauche (comic)
2003 Le Dictateur et le hamac (The Dictator and the Hammock) (novel)
2004 Merci (novel)
2004 Némo (about a street painter)
2007 Chagrin d’école (School Blues) (autobiographical story)
2007 Écrire (literary criticism)
2012 Journal d’un corps (Diary of a Body) (novel)
2012 Le Roman d’Ernest et Célestine (children’s)
2015 Ancien malade des hôpitaux de Paris: monologue gesticulatoire (novel)
2017 Ils m’ont menti (novel)
2018 Mon frère (novel)
2020 La loi du rêveur (novel)
2021 Bartleby mon frère (novel)