Homage to the talented French Publisher Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (P.O.L)

We were very sorry to hear that Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, the renowned publisher of a great number of prestigious French authors, died in a car accident in Marie-Galante (Guadeloupe) on the 2nd of January at the age of 73.

Born in 1944, he began his career in 1969 as an intern at the publishing house Christian Bourgeois. He then became a reader for Flammarion. In 1977, he created his own collection at Hachette, giving it his initials (P.O.L) as an acronym. Seven years later, in 1983, P.O.L became independent, publishing a great number of celebrated authors over the years. He was admired and appreciated by these authors, amongst which feature Georges Perec, Marguerite Duras, Leslie Kaplan, Richard Millet, Marie Darieussecq or Emmanuel Carrère. In 2003, he gave a definition of his editorial principles to the weekly Le Monde des Livres: “One must show, through editorial work, that literature is multiple, contradictory and alive. But what links all writers is their preoccupation with language, this material they try to shape.”

P.O.L's logo with seven blue and grey circles is a dainty reference to the 'ko', which is a technical combination of the pawns in the Asian 'go game', loved by the french writer Georges Perec. The 'ko' is also understood as a representation of eternity.

You can read some of P.O.L’s authors, translated and published in the United Kingdom:

- Life. A User’s Manual, Georges Perec (1996, Vintage Classics)

- My Phantom Husband, Marie Darrieussecq (2000, Faber&Faber)

- The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrère (2001, Bloomsbury)

- Breathing underwater, Marie Darrieussecq (2003, Faber&Faber)

- Earth and Asches, Attiq Rahimi (2003, Chatto & Windus)

- Pig Tales, Marie Darrieussecq (2003, Faber & Faber)

- A brief Stay with the Living, Marie Darieussecq (2004, Faber&Faber)

- I'm alive and you are dead. A journey inside the mind of Philip K. Dick, Emmanuel Carrère (2006, Bloomsbury)

- White, Marie Darrieussecq (2006, Faber&Faber)

- A Thousand rooms of Dreams and Fears, Attiq Rahimi (2007, Chatto & Windus)

- Postcards from the Cinema, Serge Daney (2007, Bloomsbury)

- Wartime notebooks, Marguerite Duras (2008, Quercus)

- I was behind you, Nicolas Fargues (2009, Pushkin Press)

- The Lover, Marguerite Duras (2010, Harper and Collins)

- Suicide, Edouard Leve (2011, Dalkey Archive Press, translated by Jan Steyn)

- The Patience Stone, Attiq Rahimi (2011, Chatto & Windus)

- A Curse on Dostoevsky, Attiq Rahimi (2013, Chatto & Windus)

- Dear Reader, Paul Fournel (2014, Pushkin Press, translated by David Bellos)

- Limonov, Emmanuel Carrère (2015, Penguin)

- Suite for Barbara Loden, Nathalie Léger (2015, Les Fugitives)

- Francis Bacon’s Armchair, Sébastien Brebel (2016, Dalkey Archive Press, translated by Jesse L Anderson)

- Trysting, Emmanuelle Pagano (2016, And Other stories, translated by Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins)

- The Kingdom, Emmanuel Carrère (2017, Allen Lane, translated by John Lambert)

- The Lover. Wartime Notebooks. Practicalities, Marguerite Duras (2017, Everyman’s Library)

- What News of the War? Robert Bober (2018, Penguin)

- My Life as a Russian novel, Emmanuel Carrère (2018, Vintage)

- American Journal, Christine Montabeltti (forthcoming in 2018, Dalkey Archive Press, translated by Jane Kuntz)

- Exhibition, Nathalie Léger (forthcoming in 2018, Les Fugitives, translated by Amanda Demarco)

Find on our website Culturethèque the references of the French P.O.L e-books (in French).

The French publishing world looses a great, talented and delightful man. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues.

#FrenchBooksUK #POL