Sébastien Japrisot (4 July 1931 – 4 March 2003) was a French author, screenwriter and film director, born in Marseille. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name. Japrisot has been nicknamed "the Graham Greene of France".

Famous in the Francophony, he is little known in the English-speaking world, though a number of his novels have been translated into English and have been made into films.

Biography

Sébastien Japrisot made his mark as an author at seventeen, when his novel Les Mal Partis was published in France and America. He followed this with outstanding translations of J. D. Salinger's novels. He pursued a successful career in advertising and publicity.

In 1962, he had an intriguing idea for a crime novel. As he did not feel at ease about his entry into this new field, he used an anagram of his own name as his pseudonym. However, the reception to The 10.30 from Marseille left no one in doubt that a great crime writer had made his debut. The book was quickly made into a film by Costa-Gavras starring Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Catherine Allégret, Jacques Perrin, etc.

His second mystery was Trap for Cinderella. This won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for 1963. The film starred Dany Carrel, and Madeleine Robinson.

He followed this with The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, which won him a second major French award - Le Prix d'Honneur 1966. In England it won the Crime Writer's Association Silver Dagger for the best Thriller published in the United Kingdom in 1968 by a foreign writer.

He was also scriptwriter and film director. One Deadly Summer was made into a film starring Isabelle Adjani. A Very Long Engagement was an international bestseller and won the Prix Interallié.

Best films