Born in Casablanca to French parents, Muriel Barbery grew up in France, studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay–Saint-Cloud, and went on to teach it in Burgundy and Normandy.
Gourmet Rapsody, her first novel, was published by Gallimard in 2000. In 2006, the success of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Prix des Libraires 2007), which has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide, opened the door to travel and to Japan, where she lived for two years before settling in Amsterdam and eventually returning to France.
In 2015 and 2019, Muriel published The Life of elves and A strange Country, a diptych tinged with fantasy. In 2020 and 2022, another diptych was published by Actes Sud, A single Rose and One Hour of Fervor, both rooted in her Japanese experience. Thomas Helder, her seventh novel, was published in 2024.
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