David Bellos

David Bellos is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos currently teaches French literature at Princeton University in the United States.

Bellos' research topics have included Balzac and Georges Perec. Bellos published an award-winning translation of Perec's most famous novel, Life: A User's Manual in 1987. He also won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. The translations were done from previous French translations.

Bellos has also written a number of award-winning literary biographies. He also appears in The Magnificent Tati, a 60-minute documentary on the film-maker to be broadcast on Sky Arts (UK) on December 10, 2009.

Translations

• Perec: Life: A User's Manual, 1987 (French-American Foundation's translation prize); new edition, 2008
• Perec: W, or the Memory of Childhood, 1988
• Perec: Things: A Story of the Sixties, 1990
• Perec: 53 Days, 1992
• Ismail Kadare: The Pyramid, 1995
• Ismail Kadare:The File on H, 1996
• Georges Ifrah: A Universal History of Numbers, 2000
• Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, 2001
• Fred Vargas: Have Mercy On Us All, 2003
• Fred Vargas: Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2004
• Ismail Kadare: The Successor, 2005
• Ismail Kadare: Agamemnon's Daughter, 2006
• Ismail Kadare: The Siege, 2008
• Hélène Berr: Journal, 2008
• Georges Perec: Thoughts of Sorts, 2009
• Romain Gary: Hocus Bogus, 2010

Biographies

• Georges Perec. A Life in Words, 1993. (Prix Goncourt de la biographie). French edition, 1994
• Jacques Tati. His Life and Art, 1999. French edition, 2002
• Romain Gary. A Tall Story, Secker Harvill, November 2010,

External links

• NY Times 03. 21. 2010
• Review of Georges Perec: A Life in Words by Alice Kaplan
• An article on translating Ismail Kadare (Broken link)
• Program in Translation at Princeton University
• IMdB