Literatureמרקו קוסקס

Marco Koskas

Marco Koskas is a French-Israeli writer and playwright, known for novels such as Balace Bounel and Bande de Français.

born 1951The novel Balace BounelThe self-published novel Bande de FrançaisBiographies of Schweitzer and Arafat

Born: 3 September 1951, Nabeul
Occupation: writer

Marco Koskas was born in 1951 in Nabeul

Marco Koskas was born on September 3, 1951, in Nabeul, a coastal city in Tunisia. He was the fifth of 7 siblings. At the age of 11 he moved with his family to France.

His first novel, Balace Bounel, won the Prix du Premier Roman in 1979. In 1980 he joined the publisher Grasset with the help of Bernard-Henri Lévy, which published his novel Destino. For many years he also worked as a private investigator alongside his writing.

He wrote novels, biographies of Albert Schweitzer and Yasser Arafat, a journal, and plays. At the end of 2011 he moved to Israel, following his son, and settled in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv. In 2012 he published a column in The Jerusalem Post on being a Jewish writer in France.

His novel Bande de Français was rejected by major French publishers and was self-published through Amazon's CreateSpace. In 2018 it was nominated for the Prix Renaudot. The book caused controversy, and French booksellers threatened a boycott.