His books, translated into around thirty languages, have sold more than 4.5 million copies around the world. He was 77 years old.
Le Monde with AFP
British writer Joseph Delaney, author in particular of the series of youth novels L’Epouvanteur, died of illness at 77 years old, announced his family, Thursday August 18.
This former English teacher had launched himself late in fantastic literature and youth novels. After a first work, Mercer’s Whore (not translated), written under the pseudonym of J. K. Haderack in 1997, he had published the first volume of his series L’Epouvanteur in 2004, adapted to cinema in 2014.
After this first success, Joseph Delaney had left his job as a teacher, and twelve other volumes followed until 2017, published in France by Bayard Jeunesse.
He was also the author of the Starblade Chronicles, the Brother Wulf series and several collections of news, almost all in the same fantastic vein.
a “unlimited imagination”
“I was inspired by Tolkien [the author of the saga the Lord of the Rings] and I wanted to write like him”, he explained on his website . But after the rejection of several manuscripts, he had reoriented himself to children’s literature on the advice of his agent. “I absolutely do not regret it,” commented the writer, welcoming the many trips and meetings of young readers who followed.
His books, translated into around thirty languages, have sold more than 4.5 million copies around the world.
His three children greeted in a press release an author “with a limitless imagination”, and a “wonderful father” who told them, children, “frightening stories that should not have been told after the fall of the night “. They also paid tribute to an “extremely attentive man, with a great sense of humor, especially after a glass of wine”, and who had continued to write “as long as he could”.