Writing a book is like telling a joke and having to wait 2 years to know whether or not it was funny. – Alain de Botton
About Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, FRSL (born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).
He co-founded the School of Life in 2008 and Living Architecture in 2009. In 2015, he was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for this work.
He was born in Zurich. He was sent to the Dragon School, a boarding school in Oxford, where English became his primary language. Describing himself as a shy child, he boarded at Harrow School, before going up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History (1988–1991) and subsequently completed a master's degree (MPhil) in Philosophy at King's College London (1991–1992). He began studying for a PhD in French philosophy at Harvard University,[6] but gave up this research to write books for the general public.
In his first novel, Essays in Love (titled On Love in the U.S.), published in 1993, de Botton deals with the process of falling in and out of love. In 2010, Essays in Love was adapted to film by director Julian Kemp for the romantic comedy My Last Five Girlfriends. De Botton wrote a sequel to Essays in Love, published in 2016, titled The Course of Love.
In 1997 he published his first non-fiction book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, based on the life and works of Marcel Proust. It was a bestseller in both the US and UK.
De Botton used to write articles for several English newspapers, and from 1998 to 2000.
De Botton has written in a variety of formats to mixed response. Positive reviews of his books attest that he has made literature, philosophy and art more accessible to a wider audience.
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