Author

Jean-Michel Olivier

Jean-Michel Olivier (born 1952 in Nyon, Vaud) is a Swiss novelist, journalist and teacher who studied literature at the University of Geneva under Jean Starobinski and Michel Butor. The author of some twenty novels alongside essays and poetry, he won the Prix Interallie in 2010 for L'Amour negre - a rare Swiss recipient of a major French literary prize. Since 2006 he has directed the Poche Suisse collection at Editions L'Age d'Homme.

Title at Skomlin

The Secret Child

Jean-Michel Olivier

Winner of the Swiss Prix Dentan, Jean-Michel Olivier's novel is a haunting excavation of the secrets we inherit in our DNA - the hidden deeds of ancestors we glimpse only through a distant cousin's confession or a box of old photographs. Set in Trieste as the city passes from Austrian to Italian hands after the First World War, it moves among cameo appearances by James and Nora Joyce, Ezra Pound and Vladimir Nabokov.