Catherine Safonoff
Catherine Safonoff (* 1939 in Geneva ) is a Swiss writer from the French-speaking Switzerland .
Life
Catherine Safonoff lives and works in Geneva, where she was born and where most of her strongly autobiographical books are set. As a young woman in the United States, where she had followed her first husband, she wrote her first novel in the style of a nouveau roman , for which she could not find a publisher. After this failure, she stopped writing.
After an interlude in London and a second marriage, she returned to Switzerland, where she gave birth to two daughters in quick succession. She took up writing again and won the Prix Georges Nicole with her first published novel La part d'Esmé (1977). She then worked as a literary critic for the Journal de Genève and the West Swiss Radio . She has also written screenplays for television and adapted novels for cinema ( Polenta by Jean-Marc Lovay , film by Maya Simon ) and theater ( Desireless Misfortune by Peter Handke ). After a seven-year hiatus, she came out again with a novel. With Retour, Retour (1984), which was awarded a Schiller Prize, she achieved her literary breakthrough.
Works
- La part d'Esmé . Novel. Editions Bertil Galland, Vevey 1977.
- Return, return . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 1984. German by Yla M. von Dach : Die Umkehr . Benziger Verlag, Ex Libris, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-545-36425-9 .
- Comme avant Galilée . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 1993.
- Le Pont aux Heures . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 1996.
- La part du fleuve . MiniZoé, Geneva 1997.
- Au north du Capitaine . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 2002.
- La tête de ma femme et autres histoires . Editions Zoé, Geneva 2003.
- Autour de ma mère . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 2007.
- Le mineur et le canari . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 2012. German by Claudia Steinitz: The miner and the canary . Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-85869-643-4 .
- La distance de fuite . Novel. Editions Zoé, Geneva 2017.
Awards
- 1977 Prix Georges Nicole , for La part d'Esmé
- 1984 Schiller Prize of the Swiss Schiller Foundation , for return, return
- 1995 Prix Pittard de l'Andelyn , for Comme avant Galilée
- 2007 Prix quadriennal de la Ville de Genève , for the complete works
- 2007 Prix Michel Dentan , for Autour de ma mère
- 2012 Swiss Federal Literature Prize , for Le mineur et le canari
- 2015 Grand Prix C.-F. Ramuz , for the complete works
literature
- Catherine Safonoff. In: Histoire de la littérature en Suisse romande. Nouvelle édition, pp. 1380–1382 (French)
- Anne Pitteloud: Catherine Safonoff, réinventer l'île. Editions Zoé, Geneva 2017 (French)
Web links
- Publications by and about Catherine Safonoff in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
- Literature by and about Catherine Safonoff in the catalog of the German National Library
- Entry in the Bibliomedia Foundation's authors' directory
- Short biography and reviews of works by Catherine Safonoff at perlentaucher.de
- Catherine Safonoff on www.viceversaliteratur.ch
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Zingg: In the labyrinth of the everyday. ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 25, 2013 )
- ↑ Isabelle Rüf: L'allégresse est dans la vitesse. ( Le Temps, April 14, 2007 )
- ^ Claudia Mäder: love and writing - Catherine Safonoff: "The miner and the canary" . ( Review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 20, 2015 ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Safonoff, Catherine |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Geneva |