[2] In February 2020, following intense media coverage of a recently published book by Vanessa Springora, one of his victims, French prosecutors announced that a criminal investigation had been launched,[3] though the statute of limitations meant the case was dismissed.

According to information available on his official website, "his parents divorced when he was six months old; throughout his childhood, he never saw them in the same room, and would often be separated from his sister Alexandra and his brothers André and Nicolas.

"[6] His family raised him in a refined cultural environment, rubbing shoulders with such famous Russian figures as Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev.

[10] In October 1964 he took part in the founding congress of the Coordinating Committee of Orthodox Youth, where he met the high school student Tatiana Scherbatcheff.

This divorce caused him a crisis of faith which moved him away from the Church; he then left the committee and ceased co-production of the television program Orthodoxy which he had helped to create in May 1965.

During the 1980s, he made several trips to the Philippines where, as he described in one of his books, he raped pre-adolescent boys that he had picked up at Harrison Plaza, Manilla's main shopping centre.

[13] In 1990, Matzneff joined Gallimard with the help of Philippe Sollers, who published his 1979–1982 collection of diary entries, "Les Soleils révolus".

[15] On 12 February 2020, police searched the headquarters of Éditions Gallimard looking for, among other things, unpublished manuscripts detailing Matzneff's paedophile activities.

[24][25][26] At the end of 2019 one of his former victims, Vanessa Springora—the director of Éditions Julliard[27]—published the book Le Consentement, describing the effect that Matzneff had on her at the age of 14.

This led Éditions Gallimard to withdraw their marketing services for some of his works, in particular Carnets noirs and Les Moins de seize ans, with other publishers to follow.

[28][29] In 2023, Vanessa Filho adapted the memoir into the film Consent, starring Kim Higelin [fr] as Springora and Jean-Paul Rouve as Matzneff.

According to the general catalog of the National Library of France, from 2009, with the publication by Éditions Léo Scheer [fr], the overall title was changed to: Carnets noirs ("Black Notebooks").