A French writer and film director, he is a Professor of Literature at the University of Lyon, after working as a teacher in prisons in Nancy for eleven years: this experience inspired a lot of his short stories, novels and screenplays. His most famous novel is Grey Souls (Prix Renaudot, 2003; Martin Beck Award 2006), which was adapted as a film directed by Yves Angelo in 2006; the most recent one is Parfums (2012), a sentimental inventory containing the smells in one’s life. In 2010 he won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Brodeck’s Report. He has directed I've Loved You So Long (2008), Tous les soleils (2011), Before the Winter Chill (2013), Une Enfance (2015).He is a member of the Goncourt Académie.