From 1997, he codirected the magazine Ligne de risque with François Meyronnis. Until 2005 he was a teacher of French at lycée La Bruyère in Versailles.
He published several novels, including Introduction à la mort française and Évoluer parmi les avalanches, as well as an essay about the tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn: À mon seul désir.
He also directed two volumes of interviews with Philippe Sollers: Ligne de risque and Poker.
The first part is directly inspired by the film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, where the Polish resistant Karski is interviewed.
The second part summarizes in approximately 80 pages the testimony of Karski published in English in 1944 under the title Story of a secret state.
The third part depicts Karski's feelings and relates dialogues that are presented by the author as a fiction.
Claude Lanzmann published a vigorous criticism of the novel of which he described the third part as a "falsification of history".[3] He reproached Haenel for having plagiarized the dialogues of his film without having asked for authorization. Philippe Sollers, the director of Gallimard's collection L'Infini, said that he submitted Lanzmann the prints of the novel before publication[4] which Lanzmann has always denied. Haenel responded by claiming the freedom of the novelist[5]
Yannick Haenel is a columnist for the literary and film magazine Transfuge [fr] since 2010 and Charlie Hebdo since the resumption of publication after the January 2015 attacks.
Work
Novels
1996: Les Petits Soldats, La Table ronde
2001: Introduction à la mort française, Gallimard, series "L'Infini"
2003: Évoluer parmi les avalanches, Gallimard, series "L'Infini"
