Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (Dicker) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—June 16, 1985
• Where— Geneva, Switzerland
• Education—M.J.D., University of Geneva
• Awards—Geneva Writers’ Prize; Grand Prix du Roman de l’Academie Francaise
• Currently—lives in Geneva, Switzerland


Joel Dicker is a Swiss novelist from Geneva Switzerland, a French-speaking city. His writing career started when he was a child. At the age of 10, he founded La Gazette des Animaux, a monthly magazine about wildlife. He was its editor-in-chief for seven years. In this capacity he won the Cuneo Prize for the Protection of Nature, and was named “Switzerland’s Youngest Editor-in-Chief” by the Tribune de Genève.

At 19 Dicker left for drama school in Paris, at the Cours Florent. After one year he returned to Switzerland to enroll in law school, where he received his Masters of Law from the University of Geneva in 2010.

Dicker became Europe’s publishing sensation of 2013 when his book La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert sold nearly a million copies in France. In 2010, he won the Prix des Ecrivains Genevois (Geneva Writers’ Prize), a prestigious prize for unpublished manuscripts. After his win, the Parisian editor Bernard de Fallois acquired Dicker’s winning submission, "Les Derniers Jours de Nos Pères," and published it in early 2012.

Only six months later, de Fallois published Dicker’s La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert (The Truth About the Affair of Henry Quebert) With translation rights sold in 32 languages, the novel has been called “the cleverest, creepiest book you'll read this year.” The worldwide excitement started at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, where many foreign editors rushed to buy the rights. In late October 2012, La Vérité… (The Truth…) won the 2012 Grand Prix du Roman de l’Academie Francaise.

In summer 2013, La Vérité… knocked Dan Brown’s Inferno from the top of bestseller lists all over Europe. Early readers of the English translation have described the book as “literary and clever” and compared to the fiction of Nabokov and Roth, as well as the television series Twin Peaks, the book became one of the biggest original acquisitions in the history of Penguin Books and was published in the U.S. in 2014. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/7/2014.)