Tiphaine Samoyault

Tiphaine Samoyault (June 1968, Boulogne-Billancourt) is a French university lecturer, literary critic, and novelist, specializing in the work of Roland Barthes. She is the niece of harpsichordist Blandine Verlet and writer, academic and psychoanalyst Agnès Verlet. In 2015, she received the Grand Prize in Non-Fiction from the Société des gens de lettres.

Early life and education Tiphaine Samoyault was born in Boulogne-Billancourt in June 1968. She grew up in Fontainebleau, in the Château de Fontainebleau, where her father, Jean-Pierre Samoyault, was curator. This childhood is evoked in her first novel, La Cour des Adieux, named after the cour d'Honneur of the palace, where Napoleon said his farewells.

Her childhood was immersed in music, notably at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, directed at the time by Nadia Boulanger, and located near her parents' apartments in the château. Samoyault is also a novelist and translator of, among other works, portions of the new edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, and of David Shulman and Charles Malamoud's essay Ta'ayushn : journal d'un combat pour la paix : Israël Palestine, 2002-2005 (Le Seuil, 2006).

A member of the reading committee at Editions du Seuil, she also contributes to France Culture and was a contributor to until September 2015.

She is a member of the editorial board of the online journal . Since 2022, Samoyault has been writing a serial for .

Awards and honours Grand prize in non-fiction, Société des gens de lettres (2015) Longlisted, Jan Michalski Prize (2015)

Selected works Essays Excès du roman : essai, Paris, Maurice Nadeau, 1999 Littérature et mémoire du présent, Nantes, Pleins feux, 2001 (fascicule) L'intertextualité : mémoire de la littérature, Paris, Nathan, 2001 ; rééd. A. Colin, Paris, 2005 La montre cassée : forme et signification d'un motif dans les arts du temps, Verdier, Lagrasse, 2004 Traduction et violence, Seuil, 2020

Children's documentary Le monde des pictogrammes, Paris, Circonflexe, 1995 - English edition: Alphabetical order : how the alphabet began, New York, Penguin / Viking, 1996

Biographies Roland Barthes, Paris, Le Seuil, 2015

Introductions or commentaries to major works of French literature Électre de Jean Giraudoux (1997) W ou le souvenir d'enfance de Georges Perec (1997) Impressions d'Afrique de Raymond Roussel (2005) Locus solus de Raymond Roussel (2005) Le Grand Meaulnes d'Alain-Fournier (2009)

Novels and short stories La Cour des adieux, Maurice Nadeau, Paris, 1999 Météorologie du rêve, Le Seuil, Paris, 2000 Les Indulgences, Le Seuil, Paris, 2003 La Main négative, Editions Argol, Paris, 2008 Bête de cirque, Le Seuil, Paris, 2013