Didier Decoin, French Goncourt laureate, son of Henri Decoin, dies

Didier Decoin, a French novelist and former president of the Académie Goncourt, died Wednesday at age 81 in Villejuif, the institution announced. Decoin won the 1977 Goncourt Prize for "John l'Enfer," a recognition he called a second birth that lifted the shadow of his famous father. He also wrote many TV adaptations. His father, Henri Decoin, was a leading postwar filmmaker who adapted Simenon's "La Vérité sur Bébé Donge." In 2006, Didier Decoin explored that ambivalent legacy in "Henri ou Henry."