David Bellos

David Michael Bellos (25 June 1945 – 26 October 2025) was a British academic, translator and biographer. He was the Meredith Howland Pyne professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States, and was the co-founder and first director, from 2007, of its translation and intercultural communication program.

Early life and education

Bellos was born in Rochford, England, on 25 June 1945, and educated in nearby Southend-on-Sea. He earned an undergraduate degree in medieval and modern languages (French and Russian) in 1967 and a D.Phil in French literature in 1971, both at the University of Oxford.

Career

Bellos wrote literary biographies of Romain Gary and Georges Perec, and published work on Honoré de Balzac; and his The Novel of the Century tells the story of the writing of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He composed a biography of the filmmaker Jacques Tati, Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, and appeared in the documentary The Magnificent Tati.

Other works include an introduction to translation studies, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011) and Who Owns This Sentence. A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, written with Alexandre Montagu and published in 2024.

He translated much of the work of Perec into English, including the novel Life: A User's Manual.

Bellos won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations.

Personal life and death

Bellos' marriages to Hélène Roth-Laszlo and Susan Lendrum ended in divorce. At the time of his death he was married to Pascale Voilley Bellos. He was the father of three children (and seven grandchildren), including writer and broadcaster Alex Bellos. David Bellos died at his vacation home in Doussard, France, on 26 October 2025, at the age of 80.

Awards and honours

• 1988 French-American Foundation prize for translation
• 1994 Prix Goncourt de la Biographie
• 2005 Man Booker International Prize, for translation of works by Ismail Kadare
• 2015 Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• 2017 American Library in Paris Book Award winner for The Novel of the Century
• 2019 Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, Princeton University

Publications

References

External links

• David Bellos: Linguistic Diversity is Language on YouTube
• "I, Translator" by David Bellos, The New York Times (20 March 2010)
• Review of Georges Perec: A Life in Words by Alice Kaplan
• Review by Michael Hoffmann of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, The Guardian (22 September 2011)
• "Babbling Barbarians: How Translators Keep Us Civilized: A conversation with David Bellos" Archived 19 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine Ideas Roadshow, 2013