Marc Dugain was born in Senegal on 3 May 1957 where his father worked abroad in lieu of military service. He returned to France where he spent time with his grandfather (Eugène Fournier) who worked at La Maison des Gueules Cassées in Moussy-Le-Vieux; this château welcomed former First World War soldiers with facial disfigurements and inspired his first novel, La Chambre des officiers, published in 1998. He moved to Grenoble at the age of six and attended Lycée Champollion. He graduated from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Grenoble and has a qualification in chartered accountancy. He worked at the French Ministry of Finance where he monitored financial activity and then founded a financial engineering company which specialised in funding means of transport in France and the United States. He then moved into the aeronautical industry; in 2000, he managed Proteus Airlines and Flandre Air, among other airlines. At the age of thirty-five, he began his literary career by telling the story of his maternal grandfather, who was severely injured in the First World War, in his novel La Chambre des officiers; it was published in 1998 to critical acclaim. Since then, Marc Dugain has written novels on a variety of subjects.
• La Chambre des officiers, Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès, 1999
Twenty literary prizes, including the Prix des Libraires, the Prix des Deux Magots, the Prix Roger-Nimier and the Prix René-Fallet 1999
• Campagne anglaise, 2000
• Heureux comme Dieu en France, 2002, Prix Bretagne
• La Malédiction d’Edgar, Éditions Gallimard, 2005, Prix Simenon
• Une exécution ordinaire, Gallimard, 2007, Grand Prix RTL Lire 2007
• En bas, les nuages (short stories), Éditions Flammarion, 2008 • L’Insomnie des étoiles, Gallimard, 2010 – Rendez-Vous de l’Histoire de Blois’ prize for a historical novel, 2011
• Avenue des géants, Gallimard, 2012
• L’Emprise, Gallimard, 2014
• Quinquennat, Gallimard, 2015
• Ultime Partie, Gallimard, 2016
• L’Homme nu. La dictature invisible du numérique (with Christophe Labbé), Éditions Robert Laffont et Plon, 2016.
• Contribution to the collective work Qu’est-ce que la gauche ?, Fayard, 2017
• Ils vont tuer Robert Kennedy, Gallimard, 2017, Prix Joseph Kessel
• Intérieur jour, Robert Laffont, 2018
• Transparence, Gallimard, 2019, a novel set in the future
He has directed the following films:
- Une exécution ordinaire in 2009
- La bonté des femmes, a film for television
- The Curse of Edgar, an English language film which won the award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival
- L’échange des princesses, nominated for the César award for Best Film
- Eugénie Grandet
He also wrote the Korean spy series Klaus 47, produced by Kim Jee Won.
As a producer with his own production company, High Sea Production, he has produced and co-produced:
Mustang,
Papicha,
and M,
three films which won César awards, and several TV series.