Biography

Born in Britain in 1971, Frédéric Ciriez studied Literature and Linguistics. The "Z" at the end of his surname had given him confidence with his writing as from his coming of age, he wrote as a ghost writer under his real name. After several literary collaborations in France and Europe, Des néons sous la mer is his first novel.

"This baroque book is hilarious and is of a rare maturity. His salty lyricism, his contagious love of life contrast with the spirit of seriousness and hysterical self-absorption of some self-contemporary fictions. Des néons sous la mer surprises by the subtlety of its structure, its variety of styles and inventiveness of its imaginary resources. This is a great sea novel of the whole world that opens up horizons for the readers. With the pleasure of a tonic language (as they say in the time of the Breton's) that combines culture and taste of subversion facetious, poetic sea and generous romantic blows." (Introduction by the editor)

"I am an employee. I take care of the locker room. I got the job two years ago from a temporary agency. After a long period of under-paid jobs, I wanted to change my life. Work on the sea, far from the warehouses of Saint-Ouen. I was rapidly contacted and everything went very quickly. A train for Paimpol (a free ticket). A taxi (free ride). A job interview focused on my personality. I think they like me, the girls who decide to keep me on. Do I shine compared to other candidates?

On retrospect, I think that mostly the prostitutes felt that as I was one of them : perhaps an indifference to the difficulty of tasks, the ability to switch from role to role without qualms, to change their function like sheets, something like that."

"Behind the pretense of love, we recognize our own depths. But also a light, carried by the strange poetry of the text, which sheds deep light: the submarine, like men always end up coming to the surface." (Erwan Desplanques, Télérama, September 4, 2008)