Japrisot, Sébastien

Pseudonym for the French author, translator and filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Rossi who was born in Marseille to Italian parents. After his father left the family, Japrisot was educated at a Jesuit school and then read philosophy at Sorbonne. He was an intelligent, but rebellious student prone to skipping lectures. At the age of sixteen, he began his debut novel, The False Start (1950, Les mal partis), which was published under his birth name. It is the story of a sweet and at the same time passionate love affair between a twenty-five-year-old nun and a rebellious fourteen-year-old student at a Jesuit school. It created a great deal of attention and won the Prix de l'Unanimité in 1950, when Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the jurors.