Emmanuelle ARSAN

Emmanuelle Arsan is the pen name under which the erotic novel Emmanuelle and a series of related works were published from 1967 onwards. It is most often attributed to Marayat Rollet-Andriane, born Marayat Bibidh in Bangkok in 1932 into a family of the Siamese upper class, who died in 2005 at Callas (Var, France). In 1956 she married the French diplomat Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane (1923-2010), described by the Bibliothèque nationale de France as a member of the UNESCO secretariat in 1969, and lived with him in Bangkok during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, credited as Marayat Andriane, she played the part of Maily in Robert Wise's The Sand Pebbles. The novel Emmanuelle first circulated without the name of an author or publisher, in two parts issued clandestinely by Éric Losfeld in 1959 and 1960, and was then published under the pen name by Le Terrain vague in 1967; it was barred from advertising and achieved wide international circulation, increased by Just Jaeckin's 1974 film adaptation. Later titles include L'Anti-vierge (1968), Épître à Paul VI (1968), Nouvelles de l'érosphère (1969), L'Hypothèse d'Éros (1974), Laure (1976), Vanna (1979) and Les Soleils d'Emmanuelle (1988). The Bibliothèque nationale de France records Emmanuelle Arsan as director of the film Laure (1976), whose direction other accounts, including that of the producer Ovidio G. Assonitis, attribute to Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane and the cinematographer Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli. The authorship of the texts remains disputed: depending on the source, it is assigned to Marayat Rollet-Andriane, to her husband alone, or to both spouses jointly. The Danish writer Suzanne Brøgger, a friend of the couple, attributes it to Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane in her afterword to La Philosophie nue (2016), according to French Wikipedia. A biography, Emmanuelle Arsan, biographie d'un pseudonyme, was published by Camille Moreau in 2024.