ABSTRACT
When Charles Juliet's autobiographical novel, L'Annee de l'eveil (1989), became an unexpected best-seller in 1989 and won the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, few of his new readers realized that the author was already considered to be a major French poet. Highly regarded by his peers yet little known to the general public, Juliet, born in 1934, had already published three volumes of his critically acclaimed Journal and nine volumes of poetry. The arresting authenticity has turned Juliet into an example of that rare, precious species: a writer whose works are irreplaceable for his readers. Juliet's writing is at once universal in scope and microscopically self-referential. Incessantly seeking the genuine sources of self-fulfillment, he raises those essential, intimate, secret questions that haunt all human beings. Juliet's subsequent book, Ce Pays de silence (1992), brings together three collections of poetry originally issued by Fata Morgana.
