In two decades, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has become one of the most widely read and performed French-language authors in the world. Acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, his plays have won several Molières and the French Academy’s Grand Prix du Théâtre. His books have been translated into 48 languages, and more than 50 countries regularly perform his plays. According to recent statistics (cf. column “Statistics”), he is today the most studied author in secondary schools. His plays, which constantly enjoy new productions and revivals in state and private theatres across the world, now belong to the contemporary repertory.
Born in 1960, he attended the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure where he was awarded a doctorate in Philosophy and the top French teaching qualification. Schmitt first made a name for himself in the theatre with Don Juan on Trial in 1991, then The Visitor, a play that posits a meeting between Freud and (possibly) God. The work soon became a classic and has become part of the international repertoire. Further successes quickly followed, including Enigma Variations with Alain Delon and Francis Huster; The Libertine with Bernard Giraudeau; Frederick or the Crime Boulevard with Jean-Paul Belmondo; Between Worlds with Rufus; Partners in Crime with Charlotte Rampling and Bernard Giraudeau; Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran with Bruno Abraham-Kremer; The Gospel According to Pilate with Jacques Weber; Oscar and the Lady in Pink with Danielle Darrieux; Sentimental
Tectonics with Clémentine Célarié and Tchéky Kario; Kiki Van Beethoven with Danièle Lebrun; Un homme trop facile with Roland Giraud; The Guitrys with Claire Keim and Martin Lamotte, and Einstein's Betrayal with Francis Huster and Jean-Claude Dreyfus. On March 28 2012, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt teamed up with Bruno Metzger to purchase the Théâtre Rive Gauche in Paris. He became the theatre’s artistic director and opened the theatre with The Diary of Anne Frank starring Francis Huster, a world premier made possible with the kind permission of the Anne Frank Foundation. The show was followed by Georges & Georges starring Alexandre Brasseur and Davy Sardou, and Si on recommençait with Michel Sardou, both plays directed by Steve Suissa. In 2023, he directed the first production of his play Bungalow 21 at the Théâtre de la Madeleine in Paris.
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is also the author of Le Cycle de l’Invisible, six tales about childhood and spirituality. All six stories have met with considerable success as both novellas and staged productions. They are: Milarepa; Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran; Oscar and the Lady in Pink; Noah’s Child; The Sumo Wrestler Who Could Not Get Fat, The Ten Children Madame Ming Never Had and Madame Pylinska and Chopin’s Secret.
Much of his literary career has been devoted to writing novels. An early novel, The Sect of the Egoists, was followed by a book of light (The Gospel According to Pilate) and a book of darkness (The Alternative Hypothesis). Since then, he has written: When I was a Work of Art, a whimsical and contemporary version of the Faustus myth; Ulysses from Baghdad, a picaresque saga for our time that ponders the human condition, and Three Women in a Mirror, a novel that traces the lives and adventures of three women from digerent centuries. The Parrots of the Place d'Arezzo is a kind of mini-encyclopaedia of erotic relationships, while The Elixir of Love probes the mystery of love and attraction, and Love’s Poison describes the emotional awakening of four adolescent girls through the diaries they keep. In Night of Fire, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt for the first time lays bare his inner spiritual and emotional life and reveals how a miraculous incident in the Sahara Desert had a lasting egect on his entire life, as a writer and as a man. In The Man Who Could See Through Faces, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt pursues his exploration of the spiritual mysteries in a disturbing novel that blends philosophy and suspense.
In La traversée des temps (Crossing Time), the first volume of which, Paradis perdus (Paradise Lost), was published in 2021, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt has set himself the mammoth challenge of writing fiction to tell the story of humanity. Bringing together scientific, medical, religious and philosophical knowledge and creating strong, tender and very real characters, he propels readers from one world to the next, from Prehistory to our own time and from evolutions to revolutions, while the past illuminates the present. In Book II, La Porte du ciel (2021 – Heaven's Gate), wearing his extraordinary scholarship lightly, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt brings readers another detective-style novel set in the Near Middle East and an era portrayed by the Bible. With the pen of a visionary and informed by the latest research in Assyriology, he reproduces the complexity and glories of Mesopotamia, a region we know so little about but to which we owe so much. Soleil sombre (2022 – The Sun Goes Down) takes readers to Ancient Egypt and a civilisation that prospered for more than three thousand years. Book III of Crossing Time is full of surprises and reimagines a world in full swing, a world that still seems like an interlude in History, sublime and enigmatic in equal measure, but whose relics have nevertheless been preserved. In Le défi de Jérusalem (2023 – The Challenge of Jerusalem), Schmitt touches base with the Holy Land, where he had a second epiphany. The travel diary he produced of his time there records his doubts and musings and the sensations and amazement he experienced in the region, right up to the final surprise and his encounter in Jerusalem with the being he names “the Incomprehensible”. La Rivale (2023 – The Rival) is a novel in which, with his inimitable mischievous wit, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt sketches a portrait of Maria Callas as never seen before. In La lumière du bonheur (2024 – The Light of Happiness), Noam, the hero of his saga Crossing Time, turns up in fifth-century BC Greece, where he discovers the origins of western civilisation.
A champion of the short story, Schmitt has published six highly acclaimed collections: Odette Toulemonde and other stories, The Dreamer of Ostend, Concerto in Memory of an Angel awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle (Goncourt Prize for the Short Story), Two Gentlemen of Brussels and The Revenge of Forgiveness.
Encouraged by the international success of his first film Odette Toulemonde starring Catherine Frot and Albert Dupontel, he adapted Oscar and the Lady in Pink for the screen with Michèle Laroque, Amir and Max von Sydow (2009).
A keen music-lover and a gifted musician, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt produced French libretti for the operas The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. He has also written a book about Mozart, My Life with Mozart, a strikingly original collection of private correspondence with the composer. In the same vein, he followed this with When I Think that Beethoven is Dead when so Many Morons are Alive, and later an innovative version of Carnival of the Animals, a fable that goes to the heart of musical creation. With unbounded enthusiasm for every art-form, in October 2012, he made his debut at the Opéra National de Paris with The Bizet Mystery, an expression of his fascination with Georges Bizet and Carmen.
In 2014, audiences were treated to the premiers of two magnificent operas based on his texts: Oscar und die Dame in Rosa produced by Francis Bollon in Freiburg, and Cosi Fanciulli with a score by Nicolas Bacri, performed at St.Quentin-en-Yvelines and later the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
In September 2013, fulfilling a lifelong dream, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt produced his first graphic novel The Adventures of Chick I – Who am I? with drawings by Janry, published by Dupuis. In 2015, he continued his incursion into the world of the graphic novel with The Adventures of Chick I, Volume 2 – Appearances are Deceptive.
Already involved in the adaptation for stage of My Life with Mozart with the Lyon Symphony Orchestra, he made his real acting debut thanks to a happy combination of circumstances. Francis Lalanne, who was delighting audiences with his performance of Mr Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran at the Théâtre Rive Gauche in Paris, was unable to appear in all nine shows, because he already had a singing tour scheduled out of town. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s friends insisted he stand in for Lalanne. It was a baptism by fire that terrorised the author but won him standing ovations on the night. Since then, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has acted in his own works in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and Italy, and he now performs in French- language productions in many European countries. He also performed in The Elixir of Love, adapted from his epistolary novel, together with the dancer and choreographer Marie-Claude Pietragalla.
In 2012, the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature in Belgium awarded him Seat No. 33, once occupied by Colette and Cocteau.
In 2016, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was unanimously elected a member of the Goncourt Jury, receiving Seat No. 2 formerly occupied by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Jules Renard and Sacha Guitry. On 21 July the same year, he was awarded the Order of the Crown by King Philip of Belgium.
In 2017, together with the journalist Catherine Lalanne, he published a book of interviews, Plus tard, je serai un enfant (When I Grow Up, I’m Going to be a Child), in which he opens up for the first time and with touching frankness about himself, his childhood, the many hats he wears and his life.
In 2019, he published Le Journal d’un amour perdu (Diary of a Lost Love) about his mother who influenced his whole life. A deeply personal and intimate text, the book manages to turn the experience of death into a splendid lesson for life.
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt lives in Brussels. The French editions of all his works are published by Albin Michel.