 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (February 2026) |
Hubert Nyssen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 April 1925 Brussels, Belgium |
| Died | 12 November 2011 (aged 86) Paradou, France |
| Occupations | Novelist Essayist Poet Publisher |
| Spouse | Christine Le Bœuf |
| Children | Françoise Nyssen |
Hubert Nyssen (French pronunciation: [ybɛʁ nisɛn]; 11 April 1925 – 12 November 2011) was a Belgian-French writer, publisher and founder of the Éditions Actes Sud.
Hubert Nyssen grew up in Boitsfort (today a commune in Brussels) and settled in Provence in 1968. He became a naturalised French citizen in 1976. A novelist, diarist, essayist and poet, he was the author of numerous books.
During his childhood in Brussels, under the German occupation, he was influenced by his grandfather who gave him a taste for intellectual culture. After his university studies at the Free University of Brussels, he founded an advertising company, which became one of the most prosperous in Belgium. At the same time, he ran his own cultural center in Brussels, spoke on the radio and published his first literary works. In 1978, breaking up with his past as a French businessman, he founded in Arles the publishing company Éditions Actes Sud with the help of his wife Christine Le Bœuf, a descendant of a rich family of Belgian businessmen, Henry Le Bœuf and Albert Thys. In this new life, his dispositions for business and his literary talents were soon to bear fruit, whereas at the time, setting up a publishing house in the south of France constituted an unprecedented audacity, all large French publishing houses being Parisian. It was a challenge and a real "cultural exception". Among his many editorial successes, he made known the American author Paul Auster in French translation and published in French the Swedish thriller trilogy Millennium.
Nyssen was also a talented author and published more than forty works in the fields of novel, theater, poetry and essays.
Doctor of Arts, he taught at the University of Provence and University of Liège. The University of Liège, which hosts its archives, the Nyssen Fund, appointed him Doctor honoris causa in 2003.
In 2011, he was made Chevalier of the Order of the Mérite wallon.
On Nyssen's death, the Argentinian writer Alberto Manguel paid tribute to him:
What was always disconcerting with Nyssen, was his ability to bring together a diverse group of people without ever placing himself at the center, as an invisible gravitational force that lends movement and grace to other bodies. All his conversations had in common the same character: he was a mere witness.
— in Le Devoir, 29 November 2011
