Gabriel Matzneff

Gabriel Michel Hippolyte Matzneff (born 12 August 1936) is a French writer. He was the winner of the Mottard and Amic awards from the Académie française in 1987 and 2009 respectively, the Prix Renaudot essay in 2013 and the Prix Cazes in 2015. He described his pedophilia, statutory sexual assault, and sexual tourism activities in several of his books as well as on his official website, and discussed them on television appearances. Nonetheless, he remained sheltered from any criminal prosecution throughout his literary career and benefited from wide and enthusiastic support within the French literary world—all despite the fact that his books did not sell well among the general public. On 11 February 2020, French prosecutors announced that a criminal investigation had been launched. Matzneff was summoned to appear before a Paris court the following day. Due to the statute of limitations, the investigation will likely be closed without legal consequences. Matzneff came from a family of Russian émigrés who settled in France after 1917. According to information available on his official website, "his parents divorced when he was six months old; throughout his childhood, he never saw them in the same room, and would often be separated from his sister Alexandra and his brothers André and Nicolas. His mother was Jewish, while his father was Russian. He was raised in Russian Orthodoxy. It was a childhood tossed to and fro, overshadowed by family breakdowns and war. It was a childhood which still causes him very painful memories." His family raised him in a refined cultural environment, rubbing shoulders with such famous Russian figures as Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev. It is here he discovered literature and religion. Matzneff spent a year attending the Gerson private Catholic school (1943–1944), two in Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague (1944–1946), then moved to a school in Tannenberg from between 1946 and 1952, and from 1952 attended Lycée Carnot. In 1954 he commenced his studies on classical letters and philosophy at the Sorbonne.