Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a writer I associate with a particular cool, deadpan precision. The Belgian novelist won the Prix Medicis in 2005 and the Prix Decembre in 2009, and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages, but what I notice is the sensibility behind them: spare, ironic, attentive to small gestures and the comedy of inertia. It also makes sense to me that he's a photographer and filmmaker too, and that he's shown his images in both Brussels and Japan. There's a visual, framed quality to his prose, like he's always deciding exactly where to put the edge of the picture and what to leave out.

Name (English)

Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Name (Japanese)

ジャン＝フィリップ・トゥーサン

Reading

じゃん＝ふぃりっぷ・とぅーさん

Born

November 29, 1957 (age 68)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Rooster

Origin

Brussels metropolitan area, Belgium

Occupation

writer / film director / novelist / audiobook narrator / photographer

Awards & achievements

• 2005 Prix Médicis
• 1997 Prix Victor Rossel
• 2009 Prix Décembre
• 1995 prix littéraire Canada-Communauté française de Belgique

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.jptoussaint.com
• Xhttps://x.com/wwwjptoussaint
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%EF%BC%9D%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%AA%E3%83%83%E3%83%97%E3%83%BB%E3%83%88%E3%82%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B5%E3%83%B3

Tags

• writer
• film director
• novelist

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.