Gilles Carpentier (14 June 1950, Paris – 16 September 2016[1]) was a French writer and editor.
After various menial jobs at the PTT or in the cinema, then a journalist with the cultural section of in the 1970s, where he published numerous chronicles on free jazz, Carpentier also became a reader for the Éditions du Seuil.[1] In charge of the manuscript service and member of its reading committee from 1981, he was a full-fledged publisher in 1992 and until 2003.[1] He discovered Agota Kristof with the novel [2] which became a great success in France and also the writer Abdelhak Serhane.[1] He also edited numerous African and Francophone authors including Aimé Césaire (whose complete poetry he edited), Ahmadou Kourouma, Sony Labou Tansi, Kateb Yacine, Kossi Efoui, or Tierno Monenembo.[1] [2]
Éditions du Seuil greeted him as an "immense reader and discoverer of talent".[1]
He was also the author of six books, which were all in one way or another about one of his favorite subjects, the contemporary city. His latest novel, Les Bienveillantes [not to be mistaken with [[Jonathan Littell|J. Littell]]'s eponymous work (2006)] is written in an entirely dialogued form.
Les Manuscrits de la marmotte published in 1984, earned him the Prix Fénéon for literature.