Philippe Besson is an author, screenwriter, and playwright. His first novel, In the Absence of Men, was awarded the Emmanuel-Roblès Prize in 2001, and he is also the author of, among others, Late Autumn (Grand Prize RTL-Lire), A Boy from Italy, and The Atlantic House. In 2017 he published Lie with Me, a #1 bestseller in France that won the the Maisons de la Presse Prize, and A Character from a Novel, an intimate portrait of Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign. His novels have been translated into twenty different languages.