Born in 1943 in Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives (Calvados), Jacques-Pierre Amette is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, journalist, literary critic, biographer and writer... His passion for literature led him to publish his first novel at twenty-two. Le congé (1965). In 1986 he received the Prix Roger Nimier for his story Confessions d'un enfant gaté.

Jacques-Pierre Amette reflects a deep attachment to his native Normandy (Jeunesse dans une ville normande, 1981; Les deux Léopards, Prix Contre-point 1997) and for Germany. But above all it is to the great writers of this country tha the has a real admiration and, more particularly, to Hölderlin of who he writes L'adieu à la raison, or the journey of Hölderlin in France (1993), and Bertold Brecht that you come across in his novel Province (1995) and evidently found in La maitresse de Brecht (2003, Prix Goncourt).