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Frédéric Lenoir
Frédéric Lenoir was born on 3 June 1962 in Madagascar. Two years later his parents returned to France and moved to the country to raise their four children.
In 1970 he moved to Paris. An unruly student, he was particularly ill-disposed to doing schoolwork and was sent to three different lycées. As a teenager he read Hesse and Dostoyevsky, kindling his interest in existential questions and by 15 he had developed a passion for philosophy (after reading Plato’s Dialogues), and in astrology (from reading André Barbault.)
In 1980, Lenoir was profoundly affected by his discovery of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, who then influenced his intellectual direction, triggering a desire to study mankind’s great myths and religions. After an early fascination with Asian spirituality, in particular Tibetan Buddhism, Lenoir developed an interest in the Kabbalah and began taking classes in the symbolism of Hebrew letters. He had no particular interest in studying Christianity, however. His Catholic upbringing, although very liberal, had focused too much on dogma and morality. Then, at 19, he read the Gospels for the first time, and was amazed by them. He began studying philosophy at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland; there, he met two crucial and outstanding professors: the Dominican philosopher Marie-Dominique Philippe (with whom he wrote a book of interviews, Les trois sagesses, in 1994) and the philosopher and Talmud scholar Emmanuel Lévinas who, as a testament, left him a fine text on ethics in his collection Le Temps de la responsabilité (1991). Parallel to his philosophy studies, he went on a personal spiritual quest that lead him to spend several months in Israel and India, as well as in Christian hermitages and monasteries in France.
Between 1986 and 2004, Lenoir kept himself busy researching and writing books about his three passions; the environment, spirituality and religion. His published works include, “Environment without boundaries”, which he wrote with his friend Hubert Reeves, and the Encyclopaedia of Religions, compiled and written with Ysé Tardan-Masquelier.Lenoir has also contributed regularly to L’Express and Pyschologies magazines.
In 2004, he wrote a historical thriller with Violette Cabesos, La Promesse de l’ange, which won the ‘‘Prix des maisons de la presse’’ and was a bestseller in France (200 000 copies) and translated in 12 countries. He also became director of Le Monde des religions, a bimonthly magazine, which takes a secular and cultural approach to religious issues.
In October 2006 he published The Oracle of the Moon, a novel full of love and adventure, as well as an spiritual thriller, which takes place during the Renaissance. Set against a 16th century rife with religious and political tensions, this novel take us from rural Calabria to the decadent palaces of Venice, from the secluded monasteries of Mount Athos to the prisons of Algiers, from the winding alleys of Jerusalem to the ghettos of Cyprus.
Counting all the various publications and genres (novels, essays, encyclopaedias, interviews, comic books, etc.), Frédéric Lenoir has sold just over two million books in 25 countries. He divides his time between Paris and his house in Fointainbleu, where he writes.
www.fredericlenoir.com
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