Marie Thérèse Humbert

Marie Thérèse Humbert was born into a large Anglo-French family in Quatre-Bornes on the island of Mauritius. Her father René Humbert was a lawyer. She left Mauritius in 1958, at the age of 18, going first to England, where she obtained a certificate in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. She then moved to France, where she studied literature and comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. She settled permanently in France in 1968. As a writer, she is the author of several novels and collections of short stories. Many of her works revolve around the eternal quest for identity, notably À l’autre bout de moi (At the Other End of Me, 1979); Amy, 1998; and Comme un vol d'ombres (Like a Flight of Shadows, 2000). Their setting may be Mauritius or an imaginary island or the Paris region.

She won the 1980 Grand prix des lectrices de Elle (Elle Readers' Grand Prize) for À l’autre bout de moi and the 1992 Prix Terre de France for Un fils d'Orage (A Son of Orage). With her five children, she has lived in the French departments of Indre, Loire-Atlantique, and Berry, where she has been a candidate several times in regional or municipal elections.