Born in 1939 in Sofia (Bulgaria), Tzvetan Todorov emigrated to France in 1963 to escape communism and continue his studies. Fervent defender of humanistic traditions, Todorov is both a philosopher, semiotician, linguist and historian. He is the author of numerous books on literature, history, politics and morality.

Tzvetan Todorov is first noticed in Theorie de la Littérature texts of the Russian formalists (1966), which has contributed to the dissemination of contemporary poetry. Followed by Littérature et signification (1967), which made him a pioneer of the revival of the rhetorical; Introduction à la litérature fantasique (1970), with which he acquired a certain notoriety, confirmed in 1972 with his Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du language. With Roland Barthes and Gérard Genette, he became one of the great theorists of structuralist philosophy.

In 1968, he joined the Research Centre for the Arts and Language of the CNRS, where he became Director in 1983.

In 1978, during a lecture tour in Mexico, he became interested in the Spanish conquest of America and has a fervent interest for the problem of understanding the Other. He wondered about the diversity of cultures and human perceptions, and the consequences of this diversity in the history of international relations. This reflection leads him to read Montaigne, Montesquieu, Constant, Tocqueville... and takes stand as a humanist in the most traditional sense of the word: "It is as a philosopher that he goes in search of a moral view of history and he asks himself questions about the great tragedies of the twentieth century (Face à l'extreme, 1991; Mémoire du mal, tentation du bien, 2000). In politics he is also involved in education issues, a strong supporter of a necessary reform of the school. Today we read in Todorov essayist whose works seek to define the contours of a contemporary liberal humanist (Le Jardin imparfait, 1998)." (Emilio Baltur, Amazon)

The reflections of Todorov, from the 80's, focus principally on otherness - the question of "us" and "other" - also on the question about memory and the duty of memory, a concept for him a redoubtable ambiguity: "To mark the crimes against humanity as an exceptional group encourages us to separate them from other human behavior, and make them even more incomprehensible." (In Mémoire du mal, temtation du bien). He fights against the manichean way of thinking and writes essential pages on the weaknesses of moralistic or humanitarian postures which transform evil into unhappiness and the principles into compassionate emotion: "To preach to others has never been a moral act."

In addition, Todorov is passionate about Flemish painting on which he has written alot : Eloge du quotidien (1993, essay on Dutch painting of the seventeenth century), which recounts the introduction of daily life in painting or the discovery of beauty in the most humble gestures and the praise of the individual which is about the individualization of the representation in the Flemish painting of the Renaissance.

In 2005 he published with his wife, Nancy Huston, Le chant du bocage. Illustrated by photographer Jean-Jacques Cournut, this book lets us see the soul of the country "where one lives in another time,which instead of running seems to expand,to open up, to offer itself."