Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you.Explosive Book Alleging Underage Sexual Relationship With French Writer Prompts OutcryVanessa Springora's “Consent” is also being hailed by child-protection activists as a possible watershed moment for France.Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapterWe made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote!Part of HuffPost World News. TV Network. There, she met and was bowled over by the writer who seemed to have eyes only for her. The book has ignited renewed debates about the country’s permissive attitudes toward sex with minors and soul-searching about why Matzneff was long celebrated in Paris.“This is a very important book. She describes not understanding what it was to be a victim and the psychological suffering that ensued.She also describes how the French literary world at the time indulged Matzneff in his publicly stated attraction to many different teenagers. Everyone looked the other way for 30-40 years.”Springora says that award was “unbearable” for her and was one of the triggers that prompted her to write about her experiences and the adults she blames for not protecting her as a vulnerable adolescent. Vanessa Springora describes relationship with Gabriel Matzneff, then 50, in new bookThe French literary world is in shock after a leading publishing director, Vanessa Springora, alleged in a new book that she was groomed into a damaging relationship from the age of 14 with an acclaimed author who was 50.Springora, 47, the head of the Julliard publishing house, claims that in the 1980s she met the author Gabriel Matzneff at a dinner with her mother when she was 13 and he was 50.She was a vulnerable teenager whose parents had been through a difficult divorce, she writes.
He wrote that he will not read Springora’s book, describing it as “a dagger to the heart” that is “intended to harm me, to destroy me” and which “tries to make me out as a pervert, a manipulator, a predator, a bastard.” He described his relationship with Springora when she was “my young lover” as one of the “passionate loves” of his life.Springora says it was Matzneff’s own writings that helped break his hold on her.While he was away on a trip, she read his fetid descriptions of having sex with other children, works he had told her not to look at. We’re all more or less the intellectual and moral products of a country and, above all, an era.”Gruesome find halts work on restoring newly purchased complex in prestigious areaPolice discover agents in stolen car with false plates while plot to kill woman was not part of dutiesRenovation plan is latest event in peripatetic history of remains of wife of Richard ICoronavirus has hit the industry hard, with division over how to respond Vanessa Springora : C'était important pour moi de faire rentrer dans le champ littéraire la voix d'une jeune fille qui avait été victime.

Part of HuffPost World News. On Matzneff also wrote about his relationships with teenagers, including Springora, in novels and published diaries, and about underage sex tourism in the Philippines – all while being hailed as a daring and talented writer.Springora writes that as a teenager she accompanied him to the recording of a TV show.In 1977, Matzneff signed an open letter calling for three men on remand accused of sexual relationships with boys aged 13 and 14 to be let off.

Now working as a literary editor, the 47-year-old says she also struggles to understand why Matzneff’s publishers marketed his most nauseating writings.Child rights activists hope the outcry over her book could boost “May ’68 shouldn’t have been a license to rape children, and yet that is what it became,” says Sellier. She alleges he then set about grooming her until he was habitually waiting at her school gates so he could take her away for sex in his flat or a hotel.Matzneff has defended himself in an essay, which the L’Express magazine published in full. Add your voice! They punctured her illusions that their relationship was a special romance.“His books were populated by other 15-year-old Lolitas,” Springora writes, recalling how the blinders fell from her eyes.
Yet for years, Matzneff was a frequent guest on French TV and radio. He was awarded a prestigious literary prize as recently as 2013 and honored by the French government with medals and an annual allowance.But for the teenage Springora, Matzneff was the 50-year-old for whom she developed a schoolgirl crush after her mother, who worked in publishing, dragged her to a dinner party. ©2020 Verizon Media. Now a grown woman, Vanessa Springora is causing a literary, legal and cultural storm in France with her explosive tell-all book that alleges, in cutting detail, an underage and destructive sexual relationship with French writer Gabriel Matzneff, now in his eighties. They’re also gratified by the refocused attention on Matzneff, a writer who had been allowed to slowly slide into relative obscurity, becoming unknown to many younger readers and seemingly freed of the risk of the legal and financial entanglements he now faces.“It was very hard to watch him being praised to the skies by everyone,” says Sellier, who wrote to then-President Francois Hollande in protest after Matzneff won the prestigious Renaudot literary prize, in its essay category, with few complaints in 2013. She was a fragile 14-year-old, too young to foresee the damage she says was done to her life by his predatory grip on her body and mind.Now a grown woman, Vanessa Springora is causing a literary, legal and cultural storm in France with her explosive tell-all book that alleges, in cutting detail, an underage and destructive sexual relationship with French writer Gabriel Matzneff, now in his eighties.The publication this month and quick commercial success of “Consent” is also being hailed by child-protection activists as a possible watershed moment for France. The current culture minister, Franck Riester, now says Matzneff should no longer receive the annual state allowance for which he is eligible as a renowned author, calling him “the eulogist of pedo-criminality.”While Springora’s book is flying off the shelves, already in its seventh printing after a week on sale, publishers who for years backed Matzneff are running in the other direction.