Jean-Paul Kauffmann

His great-grandfather Michel Kauffmann left Alsace in 1871 after the Treaty of Frankfurt and settled in the region of Vitré.

Jean-Paul Kauffmann was born at Saint-Pierre-la-Cour

but when he was nine months old, his parents moved to Corps-Nuds, in Ille-et-Vilaine, to take over a bakery.

He entered as a boarder in a religious college at age 11.

Unhappy during these "overwhelming years", he took refuge in reading the works of Balzac, Stendhal and above all, Jean de La Fontaine.

Jean-Paul Kauffmann (8 August 1944, Saint-Pierre-la-Cour, Mayenne) is a French journalist and writer, a former student of the École supérieure de journalisme de Lille (40th class).

Due to his love of literature, he believed he had the vocation of a journalist and studied at the École supérieure de journalisme de Lille between 1962 and 1966.

He did his military service as a cooperant in an educational service in Quebec.

He extended his stay there by working in a weekly supplement in the Montreal press.

Assistant to the Quiet Revolution, he dreamed of staying permanently in the country after falling in love with Mara, a bookseller from Latvia, as he recalls in his narrative Courlande.

Returning to France in 1970, he was employed as a journalist for Radio France Internationale for seven years, then to AFP.

In 1977, he joined the editorial office of the daily Le Matin de Paris and in 1984 became a reporter for L'Événement du jeudi.

While his magazine sent him to Lebanon, he was abducted in Beirut with sociologist Michel Seurat on 22 May 1985.

Michel Seurat, for his part, died in custody in 1986.

On the occasion of this abduction, Jean-Paul Kauffman lived the traumatic experience of traveling on several occasions, wrapped in an Oriental carpet where asphyxia caused him to lose consciousness, which led him to deepen his reflection and strongly marked his life:

I do not know the historicity of this prophet Jesus Christ who raised the crowds for some time, but he still spoke words about love or wealth that I find unsurpassable.

His message is even more topical than ever.

This resonates very strongly within me.

Not only, he said, you must forgive your enemies, but you must also love them.

He was provided with some books from his imprisoners, the two he remember many years after being in the captivity were the second volume of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in the last he found many similarities and understanding of his captivators behaviors.

His wife Joëlle Kauffmann was actively committed to his release which happened on 4 May 1988 with other hostages, through the intervention of Jean-Charles Marchiani, while Jacques Chirac was Prime minister of François Mitterrand.

As a writer, he published L'Kerguelen Arch (1993) which earned the Prix Jean-Freustié, then La Chambre noire de Longwood : le voyage à Sainte-Hélène (1997) which was awarded numerous prizes (prix Roger Nimier, Grand Prix Lire-RTL, Prix Jules-Verne, prix Joseph-Kessel and Liste des prix littéraires maritimes français#Prix Livre et Mer) ; La Lutte avec l'Ange (2001) and 31, allées Damour - Raymond Guérin 1905-1955 (2004).

All these books have a common theme: enclosure, but never directly evoke his experience as a hostage.

In 1994, Jean-Paul Kauffmann created the magazine L'Amateur de cigare.

In 2002, Jean-Paul Kauffmann received the Grand prix de littérature Paul-Morand awarded by the Académie française.

For the first time in 2007, in La Maison du retour (2007), he evokes his captivity, his situation as a hostage and the moments which followed his return; the painful relearning of a "normal" life; his inability to read, for him the great literature enthusiast.

As in all Jean-Paul Kauffmann's books, everything is written, in a subdued tone: through the story of buying a house, a den or an airlock, so as to be able to return to his family and to life.

A lover of Bordeaux wines, he has published several books on the subject.

With Courlande (Fayard, 2009), the story of a journey sets the plot of several quests, including that of the identity of a country, Courland.

He was awarded the Prix de la langue française in 2009 for all his work.