It was with deep sadness that I learned of the disappearance of Edmonde Charles-Roux.
With a first novel with an immortal title, "Forgetting Palermo", one of the most famous Goncourt awards of the last half-century, she had made a triumphal entrance into the world of letters. That was in 1966. In 2002, Edmonde Charles-Roux would become the second woman after Colette to be elected president of the same Academy.
A very tasteful reader, Edmonde Charles-Roux pursued a number of activities, literature, of course, but also journalism and a tireless political commitment.
She has built a life as a free, independent and passionate woman, like the great figures to whom she has given a new life, with a rare talent as a biographer. I am thinking, of course, of Coco Chanel, whom she painted admirably in L'Irrégulière in 1974.
Resistant during the war, she was all her life. Edmonde Charles-Roux has always worked, like her husband Gaston Defferre, to combat inequality and injustice. She was the first to put a woman of colour on the cover of Vogue in 1966, of which she was editor. She would pay the price. A woman of letters and courage, she never ceased to be both.
I extend my sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.