This painter passionate about art had finally become known thanks to his pen. The writer Henri Coulonges, winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française 1979 for "L'adieu à la femme sauvage", died on May 4 at the age of 86, announced one of his two sons.
Born in Deauville (Calvados) under the name Marc-Antoine de Dampierre, he published his first novel, "Les rives de l'Irrawaddy", with Fayard in 1975, focusing on the anti-Nazi resistance in German student circles during the Second World War.
His greatest critical and commercial success came four years later with "L'adieu à la femme sauvage" (Stock), which also earned him the RTL prize for the general public. Translated into fifteen languages, the book describes the German debacle through the wandering of a 12-year-old girl fleeing Dresden in 1945 with her mother in shock.
'Not interested in honours'
This was followed by Stock in "A l'approche d'un soir du monde" (1983) about a young Irish woman between Kashmir and the Emerald Isle during the First World War, "The Moravian Brothers" (1986), awarded the Four Juries Prize, "La Lettre à Kirilenko" (1989), awarded the Chateaubriand Prize, then, at Grasset, "La Marche hongroise" (1992), "Passage de la comète" (1996) and "Six greylag geese" (2001).
In 1997, Henri Coulonges narrowly missed the election to the Académie Française against the journalist Jean-François Revel. He will not stand again, says his son Henri de Dampierre. His father, a painter exhibited under his real name, notably in the Parisian gallery Denise René, was "not interested in honors".