The Mystery of Henri Pick

The Mystery of Henri Pick is built around a real institution: a library in the small Breton town of Crozon that collects manuscripts rejected by every publisher that saw them. While on holiday there, young Paris editor Delphine Despero pulls one from the shelves and is convinced she has found a genuine literary discovery. She publishes it, and the novel becomes a bestseller, credited to Henri Pick, a local pizza chef who died two years earlier and whose family says he never wrote a word.

The book's runaway success draws a skeptic: journalist Jean-Michel Rouche, unconvinced that a man with no known interest in literature could have written it, travels to Crozon to dig into Pick's life and figure out who really wrote the novel.

David Foenkinos uses the premise to needle the Paris publishing world, following the manuscript's authorship question alongside a satirical look at how literary reputations get made.