Death Jura author Alexandre Voisard dies at the age of 94

The Jura poet, writer and activist Alexandre Voisard died on Tuesday at the age of 94. His family made the announcement the same day. The "Quotidien jurassien" had previously reported.

Alexandre Voisard was long active as a champion of the separatists on the Jura issue and was appointed Delegate for Cultural Affairs of the newly founded canton of Jura in 1979. He was also a socialist member of the Jura parliament from 1979 to 1983.

Voisard was born in 1930 in Pruntrut in what is now the canton of Jura, the son of a teacher. He was already writing poetry and prose as a teenager and also trained as an actor in Geneva.

His work consists mainly of poems and short stories. His story "L'année des treize lunes" was the first work to be translated into German and was published in 1985 under the title "Das Jahr der dreizehn Monde". It was made into a film in 1991 under the title "Le cri du lézard". Voisard translated Max Frisch's "Dienstbüchlein" into French.

Alexandre Voisard was a member of the left-wing authors' group Olten. Among the awards he has received are the Prix du Jura libre (1967), the Swiss Schiller Foundation's Gesamttwerkspreis (1994) and the Prix Edouard-Rod (2008); in 2011 he was awarded the prestigious French Prix Alain Bosquet in Paris.

For the last few decades, Voisard has lived across the Swiss border in Courtelevant, France. In accordance with his wishes, he will be buried in Fontenais in the Jura, as his family informed the Keystone-SDA news agency. Voisard lived in Fontenais for a long time and was an honorary citizen there.