Raphaël Aubert (born 1953 in Lausanne, Switzerland) is a Swiss writer and essayist.

Raphaël Aubert

Biography

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Early life and education

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Raphaël Aubert was brought up in a family of artists. He studied in the Faculty of Arts and Theology at University of Lausanne and in Paris.

Career

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His first book Proche de l’argile ou la Remontée, a collection of poems, was published in 1975. He has since then published ten books including short stories and some novels, especially La bataille de San Romano (The Battle of San Romano), the action of which starts at the Louvre and questions the mysteries of Paolo Uccello's famous painting, and La Terrasse des éléphants (Elephants's terrace), novel of the encounter and destiny during the last years of the Vietnam's war.[1]

As a journalist for Radio Télévision Suisse, he has travelled to Russia and various eastern countries, the Near East, the United States and Asia.

His essays include studies of André Malraux and Salman Rushdie, the latter titled L’affaire Rushdie (The Rushdie Affair), which garnered interest as it was the first study in French on the Indo-British author.[2] In Le Paradoxe Balthus (The Balthus Paradox), he develops an iconoclastic argument based on Balthus’s famously controversial painting, La Leçon de guitare (The Guitar Lesson).

Aubert contributes to various reviews in Switzerland and in France, among which art press and Le Passe Muraille. He is one of the Swiss correspondents of the "Research and Information Circle André Malraux" and he contributed to the André Malraux Dictionary (Paris, CNRS Editions, 2011 ISBN 978-2-271-06902-3).

In 2014, he received the State of Vaud Literature Prize and in 2015, he was knighted in Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Selected works

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References

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Notes

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  1. ^ "D’une écriture mesurée, harmonieuse, hostile à l’idée de produire des «effets», La Terrasse des éléphants est un livre subtilement enroulé sur lui-même. C’est un roman de l’irrépressible retour. Retour vers l’Asie. Retour à l’enfance. Retour sur soi... (L'Hebdo, no 51, 24 sept. 2009, p. 82)
  2. ^ "Ce petit bouquin objectif et documenté échappe aux lieux communs pour poser – fort et clair – des questions essentielles" (L'Evénement du Jeudi, no 308, 27 sept-3 octob. 1990)

Bibliography

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  • Francillon, Roger, ed (1999). Histoire de la littérature en Suisse romande, Vol. IV, Lausanne, Payot (ISBN 2-601-03185-9)
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