Léo Malet
Encyclopedia
Biography
Leo Malet was born in MontpellierMontpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
. He had little formal education and began work as a cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
singer at "La Vache Enragee" in Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
, Paris in 1925.
In the 1930s, he was closely aligned with the Surrealists, and was close friends with André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
and Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, amongst others. During this time, he published several volumes of poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
.
He died in Châtillon, a little town just south of Paris where he had lived for most of his life, four days before his 87th birthday.
Works
Though having dabbled in many genres, he is most famous for Nestor BurmaNestor Burma
Nestor Burma is a fictional character created by French crime novelist Léo Malet. In the series of crime novels featuring him one can isolate a subset of novels each set in a different quarter of Paris which Malet dubbed the "New Mysteries of Paris", homaging the most famous feuilleton of the 19th...
, the anti-hero of Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris. Burma, a cynical private detective, is an astute speaker of argot (French slang), an ex-Anarchist, a serial monogamist and an inveterate pipe smoker. Of the 33 novels detailing his adventures, eighteen take place in a sole arrondissement
Arrondissements of Paris
The city of Paris is divided into twenty arrondissements municipaux administrative districts, more simply referred to as arrondissements . These are not to be confused with departmental arrondissements, which subdivide the 101 French départements...
of Paris, in a sub-series of his exploits which Malet dubbed the "New Mysteries of Paris" quoting Eugene Sue
Eugène Sue
Joseph Marie Eugène Sue was a French novelist.He was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino...
's seminal "feuilleton"; though he never completed the full 20 arrondissements as he originally planned. Apart from the novels, five short stories were also published, bringing the total of Burma's adventures to 38.
The comic
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
artist Jacques Tardi
Jacques Tardi
Jacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...
adapted some of his books much to the author's approval claiming that he was the sole person to have visually understood his books; Tardi also provided cover illustrations for the Fleuve Noir editions of the novels, released from the 1980s onward.
Selected bibliography
- 120, rue de la Gare (1943)
- Le cinquième procédé (1948)
- Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre (1954) (First of the "New Mysteries of Paris" series)
- Des kilomètres de linceuls (1955)
- Fièvre au Marais (1955)
- La nuit de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1955)
- M'as-tu vu en cadavre (1956)
- Brouillard au pont de Tolbiac (1956)
- Casse-pipe à la Nation (1957)
- Micmac moche au Boul' Mich' (1957)
- Nestor Burma court la poupée (1971)
- Poste restante (1983)
Comicbook adaptations
- Brouillard au pont de Tolbiac (Casterman, 1982); drawn by: Jacques TardiJacques TardiJacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...
- 120, rue de la Gare (Casterman, 1988); drawn by: Jacques TardiJacques TardiJacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...
- Une gueule de bois en plomb (Casterman, 1990); drawn by: Jacques TardiJacques TardiJacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...
- Casse-pipe à la Nation (Casterman, 1996); drawn by: Jacques TardiJacques TardiJacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...
- M'as-tu vu en cadavre ? (Casterman, 2000); drawn by: Jacques TardiJacques TardiJacques Tardi is a French comics artist, born 30 August 1946 in Valence, Drôme. He is often credited solely as Tardi.-Biography:After graduating from the École nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he started writing comics in 1969, at the...