Pierre Bottero

He was born February 15, 1964 in Barcelonnette, in the Alps. As a very young man, he came to live in Provence; a region he never left since then. He said by the way that he wouldn’t be able to live without sun, mistral and cicadas. Married and father of a family, he worked as a primary school teacher for a long time, before turning completely towards writing. Passionate by French literature and convinced of the power of imagination and words, he always dreamed of alternate universes, dragons, magic. He died November 8, 2009.

He published his first texts at Flammarion, including his first one Amies à vie, before releasing the Ewilan saga (double trilogy), Le pacte des Marchombres and L’autre (trilogies), three heroic fantasy series, a genre he especially loved. His love for fantastic literature started early (he still wore short pants), with an intense (he didn’t sleep for a whole week) meeting with J.R.R. Tolkien, followed by deep and frequent divings into Farmer’s, Zelazny’s, Howard’s, Bradley’s, Moorcock’s and Leiber’s universes, as well as other master magicians. When we asked him from where his inspiration came from, he replied generally about the impact these readings had on his imagination, or even his personality, before adding he never felt like having invented anything:” I just open the door and the story goes from my mind to my computer”.

Some other projects have seen the light, mostly at Rageot, or were in the making as Bottero spent most of his time writing, while he wasn’t touring all over France for animations or book fairs. He won the teenager prize (in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine) in 2008 for the first volume of L'autre: le souffle de la hyène, released at Rageot. This is a prize given each year by the High school students from the Ille-et-Vilaine department, who choose to vote amongst 10 books. He also received the departmental prize of Hérault by the students in 6th and 7th grade for Le Pacte des Marchombres (a trilogy dedicated to Ellana, one of the main characters in the series La Quête d'Ewilan and Les Mondes d'Ewilan); and the prize “Imaginales” in 2011 in Epinal for Les Âmes croisées.

December 4, 2008, he was awarded the prize of the Paille en Queue (a bird that can be found in La Réunion) on the occasion of the third youth book fair of Indian Ocean in Le Port (La Réunion). As a child, he explained,” I dreamt of staggering adventures swarming of dangers but I could find the gate to the parallel world! I ended persuading myself this world doesn’t existed and I dealt with a classic world..until I started to write novels! A flavor of adventure slid down my life. Strange colours, surprising creatures, odd towns…I had found the door/gate.

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• Rageot editor website (dedicated to Bottero’s trilogies)