Richard Millet

In July 2012, Millet published Éloge littéraire d'Anders Breivik, a condemnation of the actions of Anders Breivik and a critical exploration of his ideology, as part of a collection of essays. In Éloge he asks why the Breivik case happened today, in Norway. He describes Breivik's victims as "mixed-raced, globalized, uncultivated, social-democrat petit bourgeois." In the same essay, he also argues that the Norwegian massacre was the result of a weakened European identity, cultural decay, mass immigration and multiculturalism, and calls Breivik's mass murders “formal perfection … in their literary dimension.”. Referring to the controversy that followed, Millet stated “I’m one of the most hated French authors. It’s an interesting position that makes me an exceptional being.” The book has been condemned as a fascist pamphlet by authors such as J. M. G. Le Clézio and Annie Ernaux.

The September 2007 publication of Désenchantement de la littérature, in which he denounces the inanity of contemporary French literature and the loss of religious feeling in the West, generated a good deal of controversy.

He is also an editor at Gallimard, where he played a decisive role in the publication of Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes, which won the 2006 Prix Goncourt.

In 2005, he was with others authors as Alain Decaux, Frédéric Beigbeder and Jean-Pierre Thiollet one of the Beirut Book Fair's guests in the Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center, commonly (BIEL).

In 1994, he won the Essay Prize from the Académie Française for his book Le Sentiment de la langue (“The Feeling of Language”).

He was born in Viam, Corrèze in 1953. He spent part of his childhood in the neighborhood of Badaro in Beirut, Lebanon.