Simenon, Georges

Simenon, Georges (zhôrzh sēmənôN`), 1903–89, Belgian novelist. One of the most prolific of modern authors, he is best known for the detective stories featuring Inspector Maigret. He also wrote more than a hundred pyschological novels, which he called romans durs (hard novels), such as The Stain on the Snow (1938) and The Cat (1976).

Bibliography

See his Intimate Memoirs (1981, tr. 1984); study by L. Becker (1977); biographies by F. Bresler (1985) and P. Assouline (1998).

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Simenon, Georges (-Joseph-Christian)

Georges Simenon.

(credit: © Jerry Bauer)

(born Feb. 13, 1903, Liège, Belg.—died Sept. 4, 1989, Lausanne, Switz.) Belgian-born French novelist. During 1923–33 he wrote more than 200 pseudonymous books of pulp fiction. His first novel under his own name was The Case of Peter the Lett (1931), in which he introduced one of the best-known characters in detective fiction, the Parisian police official Inspector Maigret. He wrote some 80 more Maigret novels, as well as about 130 psychological novels, numerous short stories, and autobiographical works, and was one of the most prolific and widely published authors of the 20th century. Simenon's central theme is the essential humanity of even the isolated, abnormal individual and the sorrow at the root of the human condition. Employing a style of rigorous simplicity, he evokes a prevailing atmosphere of neurotic tensions with sharp economy.

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Simenon, Georges 

Born Feb. 13, 1903, in Liège, Belgium. French writer. Member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature (Brussels) since 1951.

Simenon began publishing in 1919. His novel The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (1931) was the first in a series of now world-famous detective novels and novellas centered on the police inspector Maigret. In these works, including Maigret Travels (1958; Russian translation, 1967) and Maigret and the Tramp (1963; Russian translation, 1966), attention is devoted not so much to the crimes themselves as to investigation of human character and of the causes of the crimes. Simenon depicts the tragic fate of people in the contemporary bourgeois world, their isolation, and their painful efforts to find a way out of their predicament; he also portrays the disintegration of the bourgeois family. These themes are found in the sociopsychological novels Four Days of a Poor Man (1949; Russian translation, 1968), The President (1958; Russian translation, I960), and The Prison (1968; Russian translation, 1968) and in Simenon’s 200th novel, the anniversary work There Are Still Hazelnut Trees (1969). Simenon has also written the autobiographical I Remember (1945), Pedigree (1948), and Letter to My Mother (1974).

WORKS

Oeuvres complètes [Romans et nouvelles], vols. 1-40. Edited by G. Sigaux. [Lausanne-Paris, 1967–70.] (In progress.)
Oeuvres complètes [Maigret], vols. I-XXV. Edited by G. Sigaux. Lausanne-Paris, 1967–70. (In progress.)
Quant j’étais vieux [vols. 1–3]. Paris [1970–72].
In Russian translation:
Zheltyipes [Romany]. Moscow, 1960.
Neizvestnye ν dome: Povesti i rasskazy. Moscow, 1966.
Pervoe delo Megre. (B-kaprikliuchenii, vol. 12.) Moscow, 1968.

REFERENCES

Shraiber, E. “Zh. Simenon i ego ‘trudnye’ romany.” Neva, 1968, no. 10.
Modestova, N. A. Komissar Megre i ego avtor. [Kiev] 1973.
Lacassin, F., and G. Sigaux. Simenon. Paris [1973]. (Contains bibliography.)
Menguy, C. Bibliographie des éditions originales de Georges Simenon. [Brussels] 1967.

I. S. KOVALEVA