Patrick Raynal

Jean-Bernard Pouy was born on January 2, 1946 in Nérac, a town in Aquitaine, southwestern France, but grew up in Paris. After earning a DEA degree in Art History, focusing on Cinema, he worked as a high-school counselor in Paris from 1972-80. He has also worked as a drawing teacher, graphic designer, proofreader, and scriptwriter, and sometimes went without work. His first novel, Spinoza Encule Hegel (1983), took an ironic view of the revolutionary atmosphere of Paris in 1968. He is well known in France as a writer of detective fiction with a social critique bent.