A former student of the École Normale Supérieure (1974-1977), Frédéric Berthet is a resident at the Bibliothèque nationale de France where he notably worked on the "fonds Barrès".
Pierre Bayard, One of his comrades in the École Normale and friend, said of him: "He had a fascinating aura, thanks to his prestigious associations:Barthes, Sollers, Julia Kristeva...
Simple journée d'été, which the author himself defined as a "suite" of short stories, in the musical sense of the term, appeared in Denoël's L'Infini series in January 1986.
The book, praised in particular in Le Monde by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech, who devoted the work his entire column,[2] experienced a critical success.
Over the course of these thirty-three years, his literary activity was carried out in various forms: essays, lectures, communications, interviews, translations, articles and press columns... Their reading reveals today that each of these events participated of the same topicality of thought: the realization of a "program" formulated since 1970 and remained in suspense the day after his disappearance.