Stephen Clarke

Présence durant les éditions :

Stephen Clarke grew up in Bournemouth, England. After studying French and German at Oxford, he moved to Glasgow, where he was hired to put computing terms and rude words into bilingual dictionaries. As soon as he heard about the French 35-hour week, he moved to Paris and got a job as a journalist. 
He began writing sketches for a BBC radio show, which was taken off air shortly afterwards. He also wrote jokes for a British stand-up comedian, who is still doing very well, no doubt because he stopped using Stephen’s jokes.
 Meanwhile Stephen had started writing novels, all of which remained unpublished. Finally, in 2004, he self-published A Year in the Merde. After three months of carting copies around Paris in a shopping trolley, he sold the book to a major publisher and it has now sold more than a million copies worldwide.
 Stephen has since written five more Merde novels (the latest being Merde in Europe), and five non-fiction books about French life and history, including 1000 Years of Annoying the French and a biography of King Edward VII’s “education sentimentale” in France, Dirty Bertie. 
He is also the curator of the collection at the Centre Culturel de l’Entente Cordiale at the Château d’Hardelot in northern France.
He lives in Paris, where he divides his time between writing and not writing.

Stephen Clarke est né en Angleterre et a étudié le français et l’allemand à Oxford, avant de devenir lexicographe, actualisant les dictionnaires bilingues.
En 1993, il arrive en France pour travailler comme journaliste. 
Il écrit aussi de la fiction, et finalement, après moults refus des éditeurs, en 2004 il édite à compte d’auteur son roman A Year in the Merde et commence à le vendre à des librairies anglophones à Paris. 
Après trois mois, le livre attire l’attention d’un grand éditeur anglais, et depuis il s’est vendu à plus d’un million d’exemplaires dans une vingtaine de pays. Il est traduit en français sous le nom God Save la France. 
Stephen a écrit cinq autres romans, dont le dernier à paraître, God Save le Brexit?, une comédie sur l’attitude britannique envers l’Europe et les (autres) Européens.
 Son essai Français, je vous haime contient les onze commandements pour comprendre les Français (dix ne suffisent pas).
 Son livre d’histoire Mille Ans de Mésentente Cordiale sert de lettre d’excuses pour dix siècles de guerres et rivalités entre Francophones et Anglophones. Ce livre a inspiré en partie l’exposition permanente du Centre Culturel de l’Entente Cordiale au Château d’Hardelot, à côté de Boulogne-sur-Mer, dont Stephen est le commissaire scientifique.
Il habite à Paris, où il écrit ses livres et des articles pour la presse anglophone et francophone.

Merde in Europe


Does Brussels really want to outlaw bingo, bagpipes and smoky bacon crisps? Are eurocrats trying to rename the English Channel? And can the ink in euro notes really make men impotent?
No. Well, not exactly.
But it is true that the EU is a seriously flawed institution.
And it's about to become even more so as Englishman Paul West goes to Brussels to work for a French MEP, and gets an insider's view of what really goes on in the massive madhouse that is the EU Parliament.
As Britain prepares to vote whether it stays in or exits the EU, Paul gets the chance to influence the result of the referendum.
He has to decide: better the devil you know? Or bring on the Brexit?
It's a decision that could cost him a lot more than his euro paypacket . . .