Sylvie Germain

During those years she studied with a teacher she admires, Emmanuel Levinas, and her work focused on the notion of asceticism in Christian mysticism.

While employed by the Ministry of Culture in Paris, where she remained between 1981 and 1986, she produced her first novel, Le Livre des Nuits (The Book of Nights) in 1985.

From Paris, she moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, where, from 1987 to 1993, she taught philosophy at the French School, and continued to write.

In 1999, Sylvie Germain produced a biography focusing on the life of Etty Hillesum, the young Dutch Jewish woman who was murdered at Auschwitz in November 1943, leaving behind a journal.

In addition to novels, she has published essays on other artists (Vermeer: Patience et songe de lumière, 1993, for example), spiritual meditations (Les Echos du Silence) and a children's book (L'Encre du Poulpe).