Olivier Weber was born in 1958. After studying anthropology and economics, he went to California to investigate the life of Jack London as though wanting to make a legend come true or to make his own way and find himself in the process.
He later became a senior reporter for the weekly Le Point, a writer and an author of documentaries. He has travelled to the USA, Tien An Men square in Beijing and Africa, but is especially drawn to the countries of the rising sun. He has covered several conflicts such as Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Eritrea, Cambodia, South-Sudan, Iraq, the Western Sahara, Chechnya, Algeria, and the Burmese guerrillas…
He has written extensively about his various adventures and more specifically, about Afghanistan where he was one the rare few Westerners to get close to the Talibans. He has written several works about Afghanistann such as Le faucon afghan : un voyage au pays de Talibans, Afghanistan, la mémoire assassinée, Éternités afghanes, Femmes afghanes…
He was awarded the prix Albert Londres for his reports on Russia and the Caucasus, as well as the prix Lazareff and the prix de l’Aventure. He has written travel notebooks and novels that revive the tradition of major journalistic essays. One of his latest publications, Kessel, l’Eternel nomade (Arthaud 2006), deals with this famous writer-traveller and it is both a travel notebook and a literary essay.
Olivier Weber has also written and directed several documentaries for Arte, Canal Plus, France 5 and France 2, most notably L’Opium des talibans and Sur la Route du Gange which obtained several international prizes.
Olivier Weber is the president of the jury of the prix Joseph Kessel and directs the Écrivains Voyageurs collection. He is also a professor at the prestigious Sciences Po school in Paris.
He has been investigating the drug trade – among the Taliban and the opium producers – for a long time now and last year published La mort blanche (Albin Michel, 2007), a documentary novel on the drug networks which takes the reader from Paris to Kabul via San Francisco, Monte-Carlo and Karachi.
Bibliography (In fench)
- La mort blanche (Albin Michel, 2007)
- Kessel : Le nomade éternel (Arthaud, 2006)
- La bataille des anges (Albin Michel, 2006)
- Le grand festin de l’Orient (Robert Laffont, 2004)
- Routes de la soie (Mille et une nuits, 2004 - essai, avec Samuel Douette)
- La guerre en Irak, le livre noir (La Découverte, 2004 - avec Séverine Cazes, Reporters sans frontières)
- Je suis de nulle part : sur les traces d’Ella Maillart (Éditions Payot, 2003)
- Femmes afghanes (Hoëbeke, 2002 - album photos, avec Nilab Mobarez)
- Éternités afghanes (Le Chêne, 2002 - album photos, avec Reza)
- On ne se tue pas pour une femme (Plon, 2001)
- Afghanistan, la mémoire assassinée (Mille et Une Nuits, 2001)
- Le faucon afghan : un voyage au pays de Talibans (Robert Laffont, 2001)
- Lucien Bodard, un aventurier dans le siècle (Plon, 1997)
- French doctors : L’épopée des hommes et des femmes qui ont inventé la médecine humanitaire (Robert Laffont, 1995)
- La route de la drogue (Arléa, 1995 - réédité sous le nom de Chasseurs de dragons : voyage en Opiomie, Payot 2000)
- Voyage au pays de toutes les Russies (Éditions Quai Voltaire, 1992)
Synopsis of La mort blanche
Why was Albane kidnapped in Afghanistan ? Why was the doctor with her hanged in the village of Jurm ? Jonathan embarks on the powder road to find his beloved. But he discovers, behind the world without scruples of the warlords become drug traffickers the bankers specialised in money laundering with an American oil company at the bottom it all.
This novel deals with international strategies and is an introduction to the way the world is ruled, between a rampant appetite for money and unexpected diplomatic bargains. It delves into the dark side of things, absolute evil and the third largest international trade after oil and weapons.