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David Bellos

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Biography

Bellos has written literary biographies of Romain Gary and Georges Perec, and has published work on Honoré de Balzac; his The Novel of the Century relates the writing of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He has also written a biography of the filmmaker Jacques Tati, Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, and appeared in The Magnificent Tati, a documentary about him.

Other works include an introduction to translation studies, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011) and Who Owns This Sentence. A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, written with Alexandre Montagu and published in 2024.

He has translated much of the work of Perec into English, including the novel Life: A User's Manual.

He won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations.

He is the father of writer and broadcaster Alex Bellos.

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