Denis Emorine

Denis Emorine (b. 1956, near Paris) is a French poet, playwright, short-story writer, essayist, and novelist whose work has been translated into roughly a dozen languages and published across three continents. He holds a B.A. in French language and literature from the Universite Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). His mother taught English, which gave him a lifelong affinity for the language; his father was of distant Russian ancestry, a heritage that shaped his recurring engagement with Eastern Europe, Russia, and the long shadow of the twentieth century's violence. The recurring signatures of his writing are fractured identity, the Doppelganger, the flight of time, and the mythic Venice that fascinates him.

Emorine has published books in French since 1982 and now has well over thirty volumes across poetry, theatre, fiction, and essays. His most frequent French-language imprints are Editions du Cygne, where he also directs three poetry collections, and Editions Unicite, with earlier work at La Bartavelle, Editinter, Le Nouvel Athanor, and Ars Longa. His theatrical work has been staged in France, Greece, Canada, and Russia, and his books have appeared internationally from Cervena Barva Press, Ravenna Press, and JAC Publishing in the United States, Giuliano Ladolfi Editore in Italy, Vakxikon in Greece, and 5 Sens Editions in Geneva.

His honors include the Prix d'Honneur pour Oeuvres Completes from the Naji Naaman Foundation (Lebanon, 2015), the first prize of the Antonio Filoteo Omodei International Poetry Contest (2015), the poetry prize of the Academie du Var (2009, for Lettres a Saida), and first prize for French poetry at the Feile Filiochta International Poetry Competition (Ireland, 2004).

His JEF Books titles are the novels Death at Half Mast (2019) and Broken Identities (2025), the English versions of his French novels La mort en berne (5 Sens Editions, 2017) and Identites brisees (5 Sens Editions, 2023). Both follow Dominique Valarcher, a semi-autobiographical alter ego rather than the author himself.

Start with Death at Half Mast, the earlier of the two JEF novels and the entry point into the Valarcher books.