Clémentine Mélois

Mélois's first book, Cent titres, was published in 2014, with a foreword by Jacques Roubaud.^[2][9] In this work she playfully reinterprets the titles and covers of well-known novels in French.^[10] The title translates into English as "a hundred titles", but is also a pun on sans titre (untitled).^[8]

In 2017 her novel Sinon j'oublie was published; it was subsequently translated into English by Terry Bradford and published as Otherwise I Forget in 2023. It is a "found" novel, with photographs of found shopping lists collected by Mélois and accompanied fictional writing about imagined author.^[8][11] A review for France Info noted the way she used innocuous everyday objects to create literary art, and praised the work's lightheartedness and humour.^[12]

Dehors, la tempête, published in 2020, is a non-fiction work about Mélois's love of reading.^[13] A review in The French Review praised the entertaining and light nature of the work.^[14] Études noted her sense of humour and the way the book combined her love of literature with questions about the nature of people, contemporary beliefs and language.^[7]

In 2024 Mélois published Alors c'est bien, a memoir about the death of her father in 2023.^[15] It received the Prix Méduse [fr] in 2024,^[6] and the Eugène Dabit Prize [fr; de; it] and the Prix Marianne [fr] in 2025.^[16][17] A review in Le Monde described it as a tribute to life, told in a tender and sensitive way.^[18] Fabienne Pascaud, writing for Télérama, gave the work a four-star rating, and notes that Mélois also manages to include the voice of her father, by incorporating his own diary and notebooks into the text.^[19]

Mélois writes children's books which are illustrated by her partner Rudy Spiessert [fr], including the Les Chiens pirates and Radio Banane series.^[3]

• Cent titres (Grasset, 2014)^[2]
• Sinon j'oublie (2017), translated into English by Terry Bradford and published as Otherwise I Forget (Liverpool Press, 2023)^[20]
• Le roman-photo (Le Lombard, 2018), a graphic novel; drawings and colours by Mélois and text by Jan Baetens
• Dehors, la tempête (Grasset, 2020)^[3]
• Bon pour un jour de légèreté (Grasset, 2020)^[3]
• Alors c'est bien (Gallimard, 2024)^[15]