Tony Duvert

In the 1970s, attitudes to sexual liberation and child sexuality allowed Duvert to express himself publicly. However, when attitudes altered markedly in the 1980s, he stopped publishing and withdrew from public life.

• Name — Tony Duvert • Born — 2 July 1945 • Birthplace — Villeneuve-le-Roi, Val-de-Marne, France • Place of death — Loir-et-Cher, Centre-Val de Loire, France • Occupation — Writer • Awards — Prix Médicis 1973

Tony Duvert was born on 2 July 1945 in Villeneuve-le-Roi, Val-de-Marne. As a child, he was shy and withdrawn, but later wrote that his sex life began when he was eight. Expelled from school at twelve for carrying out sexual acts with other boys, he was sent by his parents to a psychiatrist for treatment: the methods used he described as brutal and humiliating. He ran away from home and attempted suicide. In 1961, Duvert joined the high school Jean-Baptiste Corot in Savigny-sur-Orge, where he was a brilliant student, but with few friends. After high school, he moved to Paris to begin an arts degree but preferred to devote himself to writing. Duvert made his literary debut in 1967 with Récidive, a gay man's account blending dream and reality. The book was published by Jerôme Lindon of Éditions de Minuit, who recognised the author's potential. However the novel's subject matter made the publisher nervous, and the book was printed in a limited edition of 712 copies available only through subscription and selected bookstores. Duvert soon produced three successive novels: Interdit de séjour and Portrait d'homme-couteau in 1969, and Le Voyageur in 1970, which were also sold by subscription. As well as their political aspect in promoting sexual relations between adults and children, and criticising bourgeois society, these first four novels featured narrative and stylistic experimentation in the form of rambling style, typographic games, the absence or multiplicity of plots, jumbled chronology or facts, and lack of punctuation. Openly gay, Duvert advocated for gay rights but conflated homosexuality, pederasty, and pedophilia, which he regarded as the same thing. In his view, a sexual relationship between an adult man and a child constituted homosexuality on the part of the minor and deserved to be respected as such.

Thanks to Roland Barthes's support, Duvert achieved public recognition in 1973 with his novel Paysage de fantaisie (Strange Landscape), which won the Prix Médicis, and was greeted warmly by critics. For Claude Mauriac the book revealed "gifts and art that the word talent is not enough to express". In 1974, Duvert expounded his ideology at length in Le Bon Sexe Illustré (Good Sex Illustrated) in which he sharply criticised sex education and the modern western family. Critics praised its humour and his ability to observe the pretences of bourgeois society. Duvert used his literary prize money to move to Morocco, where he lived for about a year. He spent part of his time there pursuing and having sex with local teenage boys. His next novel Journal d'un Innocent (Journal of an Innocent) published in 1976, was a thinly fictionalized depiction of this experience. Having exhausted his money, he returned to France in late 1975, eventually settling in Tours. His next novel Quand Mourut Jonathan (When Jonathan Died), published in 1978, was partially autobiographical. In 1973, a neglectful mother had entrusted Duvert with her son for the summer; Duvert then abused the boy. He subsequently wrote the novel about what was, in his view, a tragic love story. Gilles Sebhan, Duvert's biographer, later established that the story was based on real events and that the boy had died of an overdose during the 1980s. Despite receiving praise from critics, Duvert had not achieved the commercial success he hoped for. To reach a wider audience and raise awareness of his ideas, he decided to write a novel that would incorporate his favourite themes while being less sexually explicit and written in a classic form. The result was L'Île Atlantique (1979, published in English as Atlantic Island in 2017), which received critical raves and sold somewhat better than his previous works.

In the 1980s, Duvert published L'enfant au masculin (1980), in which he further expounded his views of homosexuality and pedophilia; a novel Un Anneau d'Argent à l'Oreille; and a book of aphorisms Abécédaire Malveillant: unlike his earlier writings, their critical reception was mostly indifferent or poor. By the late 1980s, Duvert was unable to pay the rent on his apartment. With the social mood towards pedophilia hardening in the wake of several abuse scandals, he felt the world had turned against him. He withdrew to his mother's house in Loir-et-Cher, and became a total recluse. Author Bernard Duvert, who had started a correspondence with him in the 1980s because they shared the same name, later told Gilles Sebhan that Tony Duvert had killed a young boy around 1980, and that remorse had caused him to become reclusive. However, Sebhan could find nothing corroborating this story. Duvert published nothing from 1989, and was largely forgotten. However, in 2005, his novel L'Île Atlantique, which first appeared in 1979, was adapted for television by Gérard Mordillat. Duvert's body was discovered at his home in August 2008, several weeks after his death, in a state of decomposition. Child pornography was found in his home. His death briefly raised his media profile in France again; obituaries noted the quality of his writing, but also reflected upon the change in attitudes to pedophilia.

Tony Duvert is recorded with the occupation journalist. Recorded as writer, journalist and novelist.