At the age of 27, Florian Zeller is no longer a “promising” young writer, but for good reason: after receiving the Interallié Award for La Fascination du Pire in 2004, he’s now publishing his fourth novel, Julien Parme.

The novel tells the story of a 14-year-old boy’s night wandering the streets of Paris. The book is told from the perspective of the rebellious Julien, who dreams of becoming a writer, revealing the insecurities and hopes of a teenager negotiating the difficult passage between childhood and adulthood.
Through the vivid experiences of his character, Zeller takes his readers back to their own adolescent years. “I especially wanted to use the theme of adolescence,” explains the author, “to explore its major elements, namely a feeling of abandonment, solitude, ambition, vanity, glory and a sense of having carved out a place for oneself in the world.”

“A little Don Quixote in Paris” is the headline of Guillaume Chérel’s article in Le Point magazine. “Florian Zeller is a young man in a hurry who doesn’t sleep at night. His career has been a meteoric rise that shows no sign of burning out,” says Chérel. “At this pace, you have to wonder how far he can go: A Goncourt Prize at 30? A Nobel at 50? Immortal at 60 and canonized before his last breath?”

Meanwhile, Zeller is completing the final rehearsals for his third play (the first two were L’autre and Le Manège), which will be performed at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées beginning on 15 September. In Si Tu Mourais…, Zeller asks a question: “Can you ever really know another person or does his or her face, while being familiar, always remain a mask, a chimera, a construction?”

In 2002, Zeller received the Jean-Luc Lagardère Writer grant for his novel Neiges Artificielles, which was published by Flammarion. And in 2003, he published Les Amants du n’Importe Quoi.