Conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, owner of Hachette, said on Sunday he will recruit new writers to replace roughly 170 authors who quit the prestigious Grasset imprint in protest at what they describe as political interference.
The mass departures followed the exit of Grasset’s chief executive, Olivier Nora, a move the authors attribute to Bolloré. In a commentary for Journal du Dimanche, Bolloré said he was surprised by the ‘uproar’ and vowed that Grasset would continue to publish. ‘Grasset will continue, and those who are leaving will allow new authors to be published, promoted, recognized, and appreciated,’ he wrote, blaming ‘a small caste that believes itself above everything and everyone, and that co-opts and supports itself.’ He also described himself as a Christian Democrat and said Hachette would continue to publish any author who wishes to be published.
Bolloré said Nora, who led Grasset for 26 years, left after a dispute over the publication date of a book by French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal. He criticized Nora’s management, noting that Grasset’s turnover fell by 25% in 2025 while the CEO’s salary rose from €830,000 to €1 million.
Bolloré’s 2023 takeover of Hachette was welcomed by many conservatives who saw it as correcting a perceived left-wing bias in French media. But the latest resignations include high-profile figures such as philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and prize-winning writers Virginie Despentes and Sorj Chalandon, who signed an open letter denouncing what they called ‘an unacceptable attack on the editorial independence’ of the publisher. In the letter they said they refused to be ‘hostages in an ideological war that seeks to impose authoritarianism everywhere in culture and the media,’ adding: ‘We don’t want our ideas, our work, to be his property.’
President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the Paris Book Festival, stressed the importance of editorial diversity, respect for authors and preserving the history and identity of publishing houses.
Founded in 1907 and part of Hachette since 1954, Grasset built its reputation publishing major French literary figures such as Marcel Proust, Irène Némirovsky, François Mauriac and André Malraux. Under Nora’s leadership since 2000, Grasset also published contemporary authors including Nobel laureate Han Kang and Isabel Allende.
Edited by Saim Dušan Inayatullah.