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Stephen Clarke is a British journalist and novelist. He was born in St. Albans, England, on 15 October 1958, and now lives in Paris, where in his words he "divides his time between writing and not writing."

Career

Before publishing his "Merde" novels, Clarke wrote comedy sketches for BBC Radio 4 and jokes for a stand-up comedian. He also wrote comic-book stories for the U.S. cartoonist and comics artist Gilbert Shelton. He spent several years working in Glasgow as a bilingual lexicographer for the dictionary firm HarperCollins. He then moved to Paris, France to work for a French press group, and has now lived there for more than a decade.

On April 1, 2004 Clarke self-published three novels, under three different names, in editions of 200 copies each, intending to sell them through his original "Red Garage Books" website [1] or give them away to friends. He describes these books as "seriously funny", "comedies with a message". The titles, all issued under the imprint "Red Garage Books", were:

• A Year in the Merde (its title an allusion to Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence) by Paul West (who is in fact the first person narrator of the novel).
• Beam Me Up, or A Brief History of the Future (a novel about teleportation) by Stephen Clarke (ISBN 2-9521638-0-4);
• Who Killed Beano? A Genetically Modified Murder Mystery by Chris Kent (a—fictitious—female author who, it was alleged, tragically drowned in a diving accident shortly after the completion of the book) (ISBN 2-9521638-2-0).

However, A Year in the Merde became a word-of-mouth must-have book in Paris, especially after it had been reviewed in a French newspaper. Eventually, Clarke decided to sell the rights to "real publishers" (Transworld in the UK, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC in the United States, Penguin in Canada, and Random House in Australia). In France, the novel is published by Nil Editions and entitled God Save La France. It has since been published in about 20 languages, including German, Polish, Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Portuguese, Thai, Chinese and Japanese.

A sequel, entitled Merde Actually (a reference to the romantic comedy Love Actually) appeared in 2005, and was followed by Talk to the Snail in 2006, essentially a survivor's guide to the French language and the French themselves. At one point, it was the only title in Britain's top ten humour books that wasn't Simpsons-related.

The third novel in the Merde series was published in July 2007 in Great Britain, and came out in the USA in May 2008 - it is called Merde Happens, and features the Englishman Paul West, who accepts a job that involves him driving across the USA in a Mini with, at various times, his French girlfriend and his American poet pal Jake.

His fourth novel "Dial M for Merde" was published in the UK on September 10, 2008. This book carries on where the previous one left off, and takes the central character to various locations in the South of France, via Paris.

On 3 December 2009 a newsletter from Clarke's website announced the projected release of his second non-fiction offering "1000 Years of Annoying the French" which is going to be published in the United Kingdom on 18 March 2010.

Bibliography

Fiction

• A Year in the Merde European Countries (2004)
• Merde Actually (2005) - Known as In the Merde for Love in the USA.
• Merde Happens A roadtrip across Americas (2007)
• Dial M for Merde Based in the South of France (2008)

Non-Fiction

• Talk to the Snail (2006) A guide to the French way of life
• 1000 Years of Annoying the French (Due 2010) A Comedic look at a millennium of French History

External links

• Stephen Clarke's official website.
• Stephen Clarke's original self-publishing website, with details about the "non-Merde" novels, Who Killed Beano and Beam Me Up.
• Lanie Goodman: "Merde Turns to Gold", The Guardian (June 29, 2004). The first newspaper article about Stephen in the British national press.
• Journalisted - Articles by Stephen Clarke