Eric Chevillard was born in 1964 in La Roche-sur-Yon in the west of France. He published his first novel, "Mourir m enrhume" ("Dying Gives Me a Cold"), at the age of twenty-three, and has since gone on to publish more than twenty works of fiction, including "The Crab Nebula, On the Ceiling, Palafox", and "Demolishing Nisard".