Dufossé, Christophe 1963-

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Dufossé, Christophe 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born 1963, in Paris, France. Education: Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France.

CAREER:

Writer and teacher.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prix Premier Roman for L'heure de la sortie.

WRITINGS:

L'heure de la sortie, Denoël (Paris, France), 2002, translated by Shaun Whiteside as School's Out, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2007.

La diffamation, Denoël (Paris, France), 2004.

Dévotion, Denoël (Paris, France), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Christophe Dufossé's first novel, L'heure de la sortie, translated as School's Out, is the disturbing tale of Pierre Hoffman, a teacher in a French middle school, who takes over a strangely frightening group of students after their former teacher, Eric Capadis, apparently commits suicide. Hoffman refuses to acknowledge the hostility and fear in which his fellow teachers hold the thirteen-year-old students of 9F. He has his own set of problems to worry about, ranging from his sexual frigidity to his attraction to his own sister and a nurse named Nina. "Early on," explained a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "Pierre is warned by one of those students that he should get out while he can, a suggestion that something more than suicide led to the death of Capadis." That suggestion is underlined by the fact that the same student is later attacked and scarred with a knife. Soon, the teacher becomes suspicious of the two leaders of the class; he comes to understand that they have some hold over their fellow students. Both intrigued and concerned, a Publishers Weekly reviewer related, "Hoffman spies on the students' secret meetings and learns mysterious deaths have shadowed the entire class since they started school." "His suspicion is brutally confirmed," David A. Berona observed in his Library Journal review, "during a class trip when the students hijack a bus." "A series of sinister incidents," Barry Forshaw wrote in the London Independent, "culminates in a coach trip with a disastrous outcome—one that leaves him a different man."

Reviewers remarked on the unique mixture of black existentialism, comedy, and mystery in Dufossé's novel. Joanne Wilkinson, writing in Booklist, described it as "more an existential horror story than a straight thriller, with lots of strange conversations and black humor thrown in for effect." "Class 9F would have inspired Mr. Chips to say goodbye after a single lesson," Paul Bailey wrote in the London Guardian. "These children are Gallic to the core, briefed as they are in the finer nuances of existential gloom. Chernobyl and AIDS have convinced them that the future is black, not orange." "Dufossé seems to be in no hurry to go anywhere particular with his story," stated Thomas Frobisher in the St. Petersburg Times. "We get a sense rather that it is really the minutiae he is interested in, and it should be, since it is the little things with which Dufossé shows himself to be adept." At its heart, Thom Geier concluded in Entertainment Weekly, School's Out could be described as "the literary version of a citron presse: mouth-puckeringly tart and refreshing."