Born in Deauville (Calvados) under the name Marc-Antoine de Dampierre, this painter passionate about art distinguished himself mainly by his pen in the 1970s and 1980s.
Contributor to the magazine "Connaissance des Arts", he published his first novel, "Les rives de l'Irrawaddy", published by Fayard in 1975, focusing on the anti-Nazi resistance in German student circles during the Second World War.
His greatest critical and commercial success came four years later with "L'adieu à la femme sauvage" (Stock), which also earned him the RTL prize for the general public. Translated into fifteen languages, the book describes the German debacle through the wandering of a 12-year-old girl fleeing Dresden in 1945 with her mother in shock.
This was followed by Stock in "A l'approche d'un soir du monde" (1983) about a young Irish woman between Kashmir and the Emerald Isle during the First World War, "The Moravian Brothers" (1986), awarded the Four Juries Prize, "La Lettre à Kirilenko" (1989), which won the Chateaubriand Prize, then, at Grasset, "La Marche hongroise" (1992), "Passage de la comète" (1996) and "Six greylag geese" (2001).
In 1997, Henri Coulonges narrowly missed the election to the Académie Française against journalist Jean-François Revel. He will not stand again, says his son Henri de Dampierre. His father, a painter exhibited under his real name in particular in the Parisian gallery Denise René, was "not interested in honors," he told AFP.
Translated into 17 languages, Henri Coulonges' novels were published in the collection "Le Livre de Poche", the edition of "Farewell to the wild woman" remains available in bookstores, says Henri de Dampierre.
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