Jean-Claude Zylberstein

Born in 1938, Jean-Claude Zylberstein spent his childhood in hiding, during the Occupation then continued secondary studies in the Paris region, he worked for a time as Jean Paulhan's secretary and published articles on jazz. The decisive meeting with his future wife, Marie-Christine Halpern, made him resume his law studies, which he completed in 1973; At this time he was already well established in the world of publishing (Tchou, Gallimard, Presses de la Cité, Livre de Pocket) and literary journalism: Literary Magazine, France-Soir, Combat and Le Nouvel Observateur. Having become a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal, he specialized in copyright and press law and thus had to defend Françoise Sagan, Salman Rushdie, Yves Navarre and the musical duo Daft Punk. At the same time he pursued a career in publishing, animating a science fiction collection at Champ Libre, then as a literary advisor on the detective story at Hachette, with Bernard de Fallois, whom he then followed at Julliard, for the field of foreign literature. But it was above all the collaboration with Christian Bourgois, within Editions 10/18 or the house in his name, that Jean-Claude Zylberstein developed his publishing career, with the publication of novels by Jim Harrison, John Fante but also E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham and P.G. Wodehouse. It was also at 10/18 that he created the “Great Detectives” collection in 1983, the result of fifteen years devoted to chronicling detective novels for Nouvel Observateur. A long-time legal advisor to the Society of Gens of Letters and the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, he is also a member of the board of directors of the International Association for Entertainment Lawyers and the scientific council of the journal Communication Commerce Electronique. Since 2007, he has directed the collection “Texto: the taste of history” at Éditions Tallandier (350 titles) and at Belles lettres, where he revives his “Foreign Domain”, he created in 2010 a collection of essays “Le Goût des idées”.