British academic, translator and biographer (1945–2025)
David Michael Bellos[1] (25 June 1945 – 26 October 2025) was a British academic, translator and biographer.[2] He was the Meredith Howland Pyne professor ofFrench andcomparative literature atPrinceton University in the United States,[3] and was the co-founder and first director, from 2007, of its translation andintercultural communication program.[4]
Bellos was born in Rochford, England, on 25 June 1945, and educated in nearby Southend-on-Sea. He earned an undergraduate degree in medieval and modern languages (French and Russian) in 1967 and a D.Phil inFrench literature in 1971, both atOxford.[4]
Other works include an introduction totranslation studies,Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011)[7] andWho Owns This Sentence. A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, written with Alexandre Montagu and published in 2024.
He translated much of the work of Perec into English, including the novelLife: A User's Manual.
Bellos won the firstMan Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian authorIsmail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations.[8]
Bellos' marriages to Hélène Roth-Laszlo and Susan Lendrum ended in divorce. At the time of his death he was married to Pascale Voilley Bellos.[1] He was the father of three children (and seven grandchildren), including writer and broadcasterAlex Bellos.[9] David Bellos died at his vacation home in Doussard, France, on 26 October 2025, at the age of 80.[1][10]
Georges Perec. A Life in Words, 1993. (Prix Goncourt de la biographie). French edition, 1994. Japanese edition, 2014. Hebrew edition, 2016. New edition in French, 2022; German translation, 2023; Turkish and Chinese translations in progress.
Balzac Criticism in France, 1850–1900. The Making of a Reputation. Oxford, 1976
La Cousine Bette. A Critical Guide. London, 1981
Old Goriot (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge, 1987. Hebrew translation, Tek Aviv, 1990.
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. London and New York, 2011. Paperback edition, 2012. French translation by Daniel Loayza asLe poisson & le bananier, Flammarion, 2012, republished in 2017 asLa Traduction dans tous ses états. Spanish translation by Vicente Campos, asUn Pez en la higuera. Ariel, 2012. German translation by Silvia Morawetz asWas macht der Fisch in meinem Ohr?, Eichborn, 2013. Russian translation by Natalia Shahova, Azbuka, 2019. Traditional Chinese translation, Rye Field, Taipei, 2019. Also translated into Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese andPersian.
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables. London and New York, 2017. Korean edition, 2018. Japanese edition, 2018. Chinese edition, 2019
Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs. With Alexandre Montagu. London and New York, 2024. Italian edition 2024. Korean edition 2024. Spanish edition 2025.
^Bellos, David (1945-....) (in French).Catalogue général. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Accessed April 2024.
^abcd"David Bellos".Department of French & Italian. Princeton University. Retrieved21 November 2025.
^abSaxon, Jamie (14 November 2025)."David Bellos (1945-2025)".Department of French & Italian. Princeton University. Retrieved21 November 2025. Expand from "David Bellos (1945-2025)".
