Nicolas Mathieu

Nicolas Mathieu (b. 1978, Épinal, France) is a French novelist who lives and works in Nancy. He studied history and political science in Nancy and Paris before turning to writing. He publishes with Actes Sud.

His debut novel, Aux animaux la guerre (Actes Sud, 2014), set in the Moselle industrial valley and adapted for television, received the Prix Erckmann-Chatrian and established the social landscape — deindustrialized eastern France, precarity, masculinity, and class — that would define his work. His second novel, Leurs enfants après eux (Actes Sud, 2018), following two teenagers across four summers in the Lorraine of the 1990s, received the Prix Goncourt and the Prix des lycéens. The novel became one of the most read French novels of recent years and has been translated into more than twenty languages; its engagement with a generation shaped by economic decline, social immobility, and the residues of industrial culture gave it a documentary dimension alongside its narrative ambitions. It was adapted for the screen by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2024. Connemara (Actes Sud, 2022), which extended his investigation of class, nostalgia, and the passage of time into the present, was in turn adapted by Alex Lutz, presented at Cannes Première and released in September 2025.