Sebastian Japrizo is a writer who wrote detective stories completely different from the works of other authors. He was not a supporter of originality and did not strive to be different from other fellow writers in order to stand out. He simply wrote as he thought, as he considered necessary and acceptable for himself.
Zhaprizo's biography
The real name of the French writer is Jean-Baptiste Rossi, he hails from Naples. The future detective writer was born in 1931 in Marseille, because his parents came here in search of a better life. However, Sebastian's childhood was overshadowed by the departure of his father from the family, and he grew up mainly with his grandparents.
As a boy, Sebastian was very capable - he quickly learned languages, he had an excellent memory. Therefore, his mother allowed him to study at the Jesuit College of St. Ignatius. In college, he was one of the best students, and in addition to his main studies, he was deeply involved in chemistry and literature, and was also a good boxer. Such versatile activities betray a creative personality, and all these experiments were later very useful to the young writer in describing the plots of detective stories.
Attempt at writing
After college, Sebastian entered the Sorbonne, one of the leading universities in France. And already at the age of 17 he wrote the novel "A Bad Start". He did not hope that someone would be interested in the young man's work, and so it happened, in the end. However, 15 years later, Bad Beginning was published in France and the United States.
The second stage of Rossi's writing is translations. He understood that it was too early to become a professional writer with his literary experience, so he decided to start translating other authors, one of which was Jerome David Salinger, his novel Catcher in the Rye. He also translates Westerns and detective stories of American writers, gradually developing his own literary style.
Rossi also tried to write screenplays for films, but neither translations nor work in cinema could provide an adequate standard of living. Then the future writer goes into advertising - he works in two advertising agencies at once, which serve the leading companies in Paris. This activity brings a good income, and Jean-Baptiste can now take a vacation to start writing seriously.
The second novel, "The Death Row Coupe" (1962), he wrote in just a week, and published it under a new name - Sebastian Japrizo.
Since then, he could consider himself an accomplished writer. And when, a year later, Japrizo published the novel "The Trap for Cinderella", he received his first award: the Grand Prix of Police Literature.
In 1966, Sebastian was waiting for a resounding success: several awards for the novel "Lady with glasses with a gun in the car" and proposals for the adaptation of the novel from the largest directors in Europe. Now Japrizo is alternately engaged in screenwriting, then writing a new novel, and his career is successfully going uphill.
Personal life
The writer met his future wife Germaine Huart at the publishing house - Germain worked there as a secretary. She was so fascinated by the modest, even shy young man that she agreed to print his novel in her spare time and show it to the publisher. After a short time, she became his wife.
Nothing more is known about Japrizo's personal life, although studies of his work occupy many pages of the works of literary critics.
Sebastian worked until the last days of his life, but he did not finish the last novel. He died in 2003 at a Vichy hospital.
