Short biography

Pierre Daninos was born in 1913 into a bourgeois Parisian family. He studied at the respected lycée Janson-de-Sailly. He became a journalist and wrote columns for Vendredi, Paris-Soir, Match and, much later, for Le Figaro. During World War 2, he served as a liaison officer between the French and British forces in Flanders that were eventually pushed back to Dunkirk. In 1940, he went to Rio where he published his first novel Le sang des hommes. In 1947, his book Les carnets du Bon Dieu (The notebooks of the Good God) gained the Prix Interallié. Then, in 1952, he won the prix Courteline for Sonia, les autres et moi. Two years later, he became famous with Les carnets du Major Thompson (The notebooks of Major Thompson), which was translated into 28 languages, and in France alone sold two million copies. This book was followed by Un certain Monsieur Blot (1960), a critique of French middle class taste and habits, Le Jacassin (1962) and Snobissimo (1964). In 1967, he was seriously injured in a car crash and went into a seven day coma, which became the purpose of his book Le pyjama. His last book was Les derniers carnets du Major Thompson published in 2000. He died on January 7, 2005, aged 91.