Georges Simenon
"His mouth open, he fell asleep, because a man always falls asleep in the end. One weeps, one shrieks, one rages, one despairs, and then one eats and sleeps as if nothing had happened."
Georges Simenon is one of the foremost writers of the 20th century, publishing approximately 400 novels during his lifetime – although only half of them were under his own name. Plus, he also wrote memoirs and short stories, adding to his extensive works and international literary reputation.
Simenon is most notable for his Inspector Maigret series, which follows a French police detective as he solves crimes. There are no fewer than 75 Maigret novels, a large number of short stories, and even film, television, and radio adaptations. These crime novels have been translated into more than 50 languages, and there is now a Maigret statue in the Netherlands.
Meet Georges Simenon
Georges Jospeh Christian Simenon was born in Belgium in 1903, and during his childhood, his family took in lodgers. Many of these lodgers were students from Eastern Europe, which introduced the young Georges to people from other places and cultures, which would later influence some of his novels.
During his high school years, Georges was a poor student. He skipped school, and was often caught stealing in order to enjoy small luxuries during the war. He would eventually leave school in 1918 before sitting his end of year exams, and soon took a job as a junior reporter for a local newspaper. He was quickly promoted to crime reporting, and studied a university course on forensic science to improve his knowledge.
It wasn’t long before crime reporting turned into crime writing, but it would take another five years before he started seriously selling his short stories for income. In 1930, he published his first Maigret novel, Pietr the Latvian, which was also the first fictional work Simenon wrote under his own name.
That launched a spate of Maigret novels, with Simenon completing almost 20 within the next two years. After these novels were published, Simenon turned his focus to other works, with the aim of winning a Novel Prize for Literature. It was during this time that he published works such as The Shadow Falls, and The Man who Watched the Trains Go By.
However, during the war, Simenon returned to the Maigret novels, publishing more of them alongside other novels and memoirs for the majority of his life. Many of his works have been adapted for film and television, and his legacy lives on with his many fans around the world.