After various menial jobs at the PTT or in the cinema, then a journalist with the cultural section of Rouge [fr] in the 1970s, where he published numerous chronicles on free jazz, Carpentier also became a reader for the Éditions du Seuil.
[1] He discovered Agota Kristof with the novel The Notebook [fr][2] which became a great success in France and also the writer Abdelhak Serhane.
[1] He also edited numerous African and Francophone authors including Aimé Césaire (whose complete poetry he edited), Ahmadou Kourouma, Sony Labou Tansi, Kateb Yacine, Kossi Efoui, or Tierno Monenembo.
His latest novel, Les Bienveillantes [not to be mistaken with J. Littell's eponymous work (2006)] is written in an entirely dialogued form.
Les Manuscrits de la marmotte published in 1984, earned him the Prix Fénéon for literature.