Director of publisher Fayard from 1980 to 2009, he was before, with his wife
Carmen Perea Jimenez, a translator of Spanish to French and so brought "Cent Ans de solitude" by
Gabriel García Márquez to this public. He was also the agent of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from 1974 to 2008 after having published "L'Archipel du Goulag". He wrote many books and won the prix Médicis in 1979.