from Le Secret: The Secret Agent’s Story

Philippe Sollers, born near Bordeaux in 1936, founded the influential journals Tel Quel and L’Infini. He is the author of scores of novels and essays and the subject of his friend Roland Barthes’s book Writer Sollers. Sollers stands at the pinnacle of the French intellectual elite for his creative re-invention of a literary language and his caustic views of society and its ills. He has been married to Julia Kristeva since 1967. (updated 10/2016)

Armine Kotin Mortimer is the translator of Philippe Sollers’s* Mysterious Mozart* (University of Illinois Press, 2010) and his Casanova the Irresistible (Illinois, 2016). Excerpts from her translations of Sollers’s novels have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, AGNI, The Brooklyn Rail, The Cossack Review, and Asymptote. Her long career as a professor of French literature occasioned many scholarly books and articles, as well as recognition by the French government with the Palmes Académiques in 2009. (updated 10/2016)