From 1960 to 2000, he was the literary director of Éditions Grasset, and published several novels in which he expressed his attachment to the United States.

The son of a road transporter, Yves Berger affirmed that this detail has its importance because several of his works were filled with his love of the voyages.

After high school at the Cité scolaire Frédéric-Mistral [fr] in Avignon, Yves Berger studied at Montpellier and in Paris.

His childhood, rocked by Jack London and Fenimore Cooper, inspired him with this passion for the New World that never left him.

Yves Berger also contributed to making French authors known such as Marie-Claire Blais and Antonine Maillet and prefaced the works of Native American authors such as Dee Brown, Vine Deloria and N. Scott Momaday whom he considered to be the greatest Amerindian writer of today.