His following novel, Les Quartiers d'hiver was published in 1990 by Gallimard:[4] the backdrop is « le Vagabond », a gay bar in Paris, at the start of the AIDS epidemic.

[8] In Tout est passé si vite (2003, which received the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française), he paints the portrait of a close friend who is an editor and writer who is diagnosed with cancer.

His travels to Haiti and the Dominican Republic inspired two novels: Les Dollars des sables (2006),[9] and Montecristi (2009), in which he uncovers an ecological scandal.

In La Montagne (2012), Jean-Noël Pancrazi confronts a memory that he has kept secret for many years: the death of six young childhood friends, assassinated on a mountain during the Algerian war.

In Indétectable, a novel published in 2014 (Gallimard), he tells the story of Mady, an illegal immigrant from Mali living in Paris for ten years.