Alain Defossé (11 February 1957 – 14 May 2017) was a French novelist and a prolific translator of contemporary English-language fiction into French. He was born in Nantes and built a career that combined his own creative writing with translating notable anglophone authors for French readers.
Career
Defossé’s debut novel, Les fourmis d’Anvers, appeared in 1991. Alongside his work as a novelist, he translated a number of well-known and sometimes controversial English-language books into French, becoming respected for bringing recent anglophone voices to France.
- In 1990 he produced a French edition of Crazy Cock by Henry Miller.
- He translated American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis in 1993.
- In 2006 he rendered The Night Watch by Sarah Waters into French.
- He translated Rant by Chuck Palahniuk in 2008.
- Defossé also worked on translations of texts by Irvine Welsh and by Joseph Connolly, among others.
His translations helped introduce and establish contemporary anglophone novelists in France, and his body of work spans both literary fiction and more transgressive, boundary-pushing texts.
Death
Alain Defossé died on 14 May 2017 in Paris. The cause of death was lung cancer; he was 60 years old.