François Maspero

François Maspero 19 January 1932 in Paris 11 April 2015 in Paris was a French author and journalist best known as a publisher of leftist books in the 1970s He also worked as a translator translating the works of Joseph Conrad Mehdi Ben Barka and John Reed author of Ten Days that Shook the World among others He was awarded the Prix Décembre in 1990 for Les Passagers du RoissyExpress François Maspero was born in 1932 His youth was marked by the cultural environment of his family several of whom were noted scholars and his parents participation in the Resistance His father Henri Maspero a sinologist and professor at the Collège de France died at Buchenwald but his mother survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp His grandfather Gaston Maspero who died before his birth was a famous Egyptologist François Maspero opened a book store in the Latin Quarter in 1955 at the age of 23 In 1959 in the middle of the Algerian War he and MarieThérèse Maugis formed the Maspero publishing house Éditions François Maspero They later were joined by JeanPhilippe Bernigaud and Fanchita Gonzalez Batlle and then by Émile Copfermann Their first two collections Cahiers libres and Textes à lappui focused on the Algerian War from an anticolonialist perspective and on contestation of the French Communist Partys unreformed Stalinism Maspero published Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth 1961 censored by the French authorities with a preface by JeanPaul Sartre as well as Fanons LAn V de la Révolution algérienne Maspero published other testimonies on Algeria including investigations of the use of torture by the French Army also censored Besides facing lawsuits as a result of his courageous publishing decisions Maspero was the target of bomb attacks He republished Paul Nizans Les Chiens de garde and Aden Arabie also with a preface by Sartre Then he created the review Partisans which survived until 1973 Many important writers first came to public attention through the Cahiers libres collection such as Régis Debray published in 1967 or BernardHenri Lévy in 1973 Georges Perec published his first texts in Partisans In the 1960s Éditions Maspero paid particular attention to the problems of the Third World and of neocolonialism publishing among others books by Che Guevara Maspero published Mongo Betis Cruel hand on Cameroon autopsy of a decolonization in 1972 which was censored by Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin at the request brought forward by Jacques Foccart of the Cameroon government represented in Paris by ambassador and author Ferdinand Oyono In 1975 he republished Jean Maitrons classic History of the anarchist movement in France 18801914 In the years 196782 he published the Petite Collection Maspero Little Maspero Series In 1983 Maspero publishing house was transformed into the Éditions La Découverte later bought by Vivendi Universal Publishing later Editis Source Article François Maspero from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30