Claire Etcherelli

Claire Etcherelli, born January 11, 1931 in Bordeaux (Gironde) and died March 5, 2023 in Paris 13th, is a French writer. She was the recipient of the Femina Prize in 1967 for her first novel, “Élise or real life”.

Claire Etcherelli was born in Bordeaux on January 11, 1931. Her docker father, who was drafted, was then detained in a prison camp. She then went to live with her grandfather in the Basque Country. She became an orphan at the age of 11. Having become a ward of the Nation, and therefore a scholarship holder, she entered a chic Catholic boarding school in Bordeaux, where she said she was uncomfortable because of the difference in social classes. To stand out, she refuses to take her baccalaureate and abandons her studies. She married in 1951. She began writing at 19, without finding a favorable reception from publishers. Her first son was born in 1955. In 1957, she moved to Paris, where, out of necessity, she worked first as a controller on a production line at Citroën, then as a worker in another factory. She was hospitalized following health problems, survived thanks to a few households, then found a less grueling job in a travel agency in 1960, which allowed her to start writing again. She began writing “Élise ou la Vraie Vie”, which highlights assembly line work, conflicting human relationships and especially the racism particular to this period of the Algerian War. In 1959, she gave birth to her second son, and completed her novel in 1963, searching in vain for a publisher.