Alphonse Boudard

Alphonse Boudard (17 December 1925 – 14 January 2000) was a French novelist and playwright. He won the 1977 Prix Renaudot for Les Combattants du petit bonheur. Boudard's 1995 novel Dying childhood was awarded and recognised by the French Academy with a Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française. Boudard was born in Paris, an illegitimate child. He was brought up first by an adoptive family in the Loiret region of the center of France, then by his grand mother in the south of Paris. Boudard had a late career. As a teenager he was living in a country occupied by the German Army. He was wounded fighting for the French and he was awarded a military medal. His early adult life was spent in casual work, periods in jail and in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis. He experimented with writing, but it was not until he was 33 that he decided to be a full-time writer. He credits the writer Albert Paraz with inspiring this move.