French author Muriel Barbery appeared on the international literary stage 10 years ago when her second novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, became a sleeper hit, topping the French bestseller lists ...

Muriel Barbery is lovely, not unlike the exquisite prose of her runaway hit novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Why a hedgehog? She shakes her head. “The whole time [the novel] was just called 'Renee ...

In Japan there’s a kind of tea party where the guests agree to talk only about what’s inside the room they’re in. Avoiding politics or gossip, they look around and notice things they otherwise ...

In 1929, the French writer Jean Giono (best known for The Man Who Planted Trees) published a visionary – perhaps previsionary – short novel called Colline. A near-perfect allegory, it depicted the ...

In 2006, author Muriel Barbery struck gold with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a book that became a bestseller and quickly sold a million copies throughout multiple countries. In her latest novel to be ...

When Muriel Barbery appears on screen via Skype, she looks so youthful and petite that at first you might be forgiven for thinking that one of the fairies from her latest book, The Life of Elves, has ...

If one judges a book by how well it answers its own central query, Muriel Barbery's most recently translated novel, Gourmet Rhapsody, can be said to have succeeded. Food critic Pierre Arthens, whose ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Muriel Barbery, 52, a French former lecturer in philosophy, is the author of novels including The Elegance of ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. French writer Muriel Barbery was born in 1969 in Casablanca, but her parents moved back to France when she was ...

French writer Muriel Barbery: 'I was terrified that by thinking too much about my own work I would kill a kind of innocence in myself' (Getty Images) Hedgehogs hibernate. They do not vanish from view ...