20th-century French novelists

Jacques Rivière (15 July 1886 – 14 February 1925) was a French "man of letters" — a writer, critic and editor who was "a major force in the intellectual life of France in the period immediately following World War I". He edited the magazine La Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) from 1919 until his death. He was influential in winning a general public acceptance of Marcel Proust as an important writer. His friend and brother-in-law was Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban-Fournier), with whom he exchanged an abundant correspondence.

Pierre-Jules Renard (pronounced [pjɛʁ ʒyl ʁənaʁ]; 22 February 1864 – 22 May 1910) was a French author and member of the Académie Goncourt, most famous for the works Poil de carotte (Carrot Top, 1894) and Les Histoires Naturelles (Nature Stories, 1896). Among his other works are Le Plaisir de rompre (The Pleasure of Breaking, 1898) and the posthumously published Huit Jours à la campagne (A Week in the Country, 1912).

Pierre-Félix Louÿs (French: [pjɛʁ lu.is]; 10 December 1870 – 4 June 1925) was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who sought to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection". He was made first a Chevalier and then an Officer of the Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French literature.

Marcel Jouhandeau (July 26, 1888 Guéret – April 7, 1979) was a French writer.

Mazarine Marie Pingeot (born 18 December 1974) who changed her name to Mazarine Marie Mitterrand Pingeot in November 2016, is a French writer, journalist and professor.

Hervé Bazin (French: [bazɛ̃]; 17 April 1911 – 17 February 1996) was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.

Jean-Patrick Manchette (19 December 1942, Marseille – 3 June 1995, Paris) was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the seventies and early eighties, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that period. His stories are violent explorations of the human condition and French society. Manchette was politically to the left and his writing reflects this through his analysis of social positions and culture.
Eight of his eleven novels have been translated into English. Two were published by San Francisco publisher City Lights Books—3 To Kill (from the French Le petit bleu de la côte ouest) and The Prone Gunman (from the French La Position du tireur couché). Five other novels, Fatale, The Mad and the Bad (from the French O dingos, O chateaux!), Ivory Pearl (from the French La Princesse du Sang), Nada, and No Room at the Morgue were released by New York Review Books Classics in 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. In 2009, Fantagraphics Books released an English-language version of French cartoonist Jacques Tardi's adaptation of Le petit bleu de la côte ouest, under the new English title West Coast Blues. Fantagraphics released a second Tardi adaptation, of "La Position du tireur couché" (under the title "Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot" ) in 2011, and a third one, of "Ô Dingos! Ô Châteaux!" (under the title "Run Like Crazy Run Like Hell") in 2015. Manchette was a fan of comics, and his praised translation of Alan Moore's Watchmen into French remains in print.

Pascal Sevran (16 October 1945 – 9 May 2008) was a French TV presenter and author.

Roland Topor (7 January 1938 – 16 April 1997) was a French illustrator, cartoonist, comics artist, painter, novelist, playwright, film and TV writer, filmmaker and actor, who was known for the surreal nature of his work. He was of Polish-Jewish origin. His parents were Jewish émigrés from Warsaw, Poland. He spent the early years of his life in Savoy, where his family hid him from the Gestapo.

Boileau-Narcejac is the pen name used by the French crime-writing duo of Pierre Boileau (28 April 1906 – 16 January 1989) and Pierre Ayraud, also known as Thomas Narcejac (3 July 1908 – 7 June 1998). Their successful collaboration produced 43 novels, 100 short stories and 4 plays. They are credited with having helped to form an authentically French subgenre of crime fiction with the emphasis on local settings and mounting psychological suspense. They are noted for the ingenuity of their plots and the skillful evocation of the mood of disorientation and fear. Their works were adapted into numerous films, most notably, Les Diaboliques (1955), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.