Authors

Diane Ducret is a popular French writer, born in Belgium. In 2011, her debut Les femmes de dictateur was the #1 non-fiction bestseller in France, translated into 25 languages, with over one million copies sold internationally. In 2014, Diane Ducret wrote La chair interdite, a narrative history of the female sex, from Ancient Egypt to the present day. In 2017, Flammarion published Les Indésirables, a dramatic comedy set in the Gurs internment camp where single ‘undesirable’ women were sent during the Second World War, and how two friends, one Jewish and one Aryan, produce their own cabaret to dance and sing in the face of barbarism. In 2018, Flammarion published La meillure façon du marcher est celle du flamant Rose, an autobiographical novel and a bestseller in France. Diane Ducret’s first theatre play, Vous n’aurez pas le dernier mot (You Won’t Have the Last Word) was staged in Paris, at the Théâtre Montparnasse, in October 2019, and, after success, in January 2020 at the Théâtre du Palais Royal. In 2020, Flammarion published La Dictatrice, a speculative novel that imagines parallels between modern-day Europe and the rise of Nazism, asking if women are as capable as men of implementing institutionalised cruelty, and asking what does it take for society’s values to crumble in the face of a charismatic leader promising easy solutions. Movie and adaptation rights to La Dictatrice sold through CAA to Stacey Sher’s production company/FX. Flammarion will publish Le maître de l’océan in March 2022, a gripping spiritual novella, inspired by the French ‘Contes philosophiques’, popular internationally in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this highly anticipated title, Diane Ducret has created an adventure story for our times, exploring Taoism and the wisdom of Lao Tszu.