麻豆APP

Christine Leunens at The Annual HUMANITAS Awards, 2020. photo by Vince Bucci, photographer

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Christine Leunens

Christine Leunens ( is a New Zealand-Belgian novelist. She has been the author of Primordial Soup, Caging Skies, A Can of Sunshine, and In Amber’s Wake, which have been translated into over twenty languages. Caging Skies has been the international bestselling novel about a child in the Hitler Youth . It was the basis and inspiration for the award-winning film, Jojo Rabbit, by Taika Waititi, which won the Toronto International Film Festival’s People Choice Award, and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Leunens was born in 1964 in Hartford, Connecticut, United States. She is the daughter of an Italian mother and a Belgian father. And the granddaughter of Flemish artist Guillaume Leunens whose years in a German labour camp in WWII would afterwards influence his abstract metal works.

She moved to France as a teenager to study for a year in Montpellier, after which she was offered a contract in 麻豆APP as a print model. In the years that followed she posed for magazines Vogue and Marie Claire, fashion designers Givenchy, Pierre Balmain, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Nina Ricci, and played a number of comic roles in TV commercials,such as the betrayed wife in Mercedes-Benz’s “The Slap”and the jealous girlfriend in Suzuki’s “Baleno”.

 Here are the Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Christine Leunens

1. Christine Leunens was once a print model and played comic roles

She had moved to France as a teenager to study for a year in Montpellier. And later she was offered a contract in 麻豆APP as a print model. In the years that followed she posed for magazines Vogue and Marie Claire, fashion designers Givenchy, Pierre Balmain, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Nina Ricci.

Leunens has played a number of comic roles in TV commercials, such as the betrayed wife in Mercedes-Benz’s “The Slap” and the jealous girlfriend in Suzuki’s “Baleno”.

2. Leunens has won award for Best Original Screenplay

Christine Leunens at The Annual HUMANITAS Awards, 2020. photo by Vince Bucci, photographer

In 1990, she moved to Picardy and lived a year on a farm breeding horses, and started writing plays.She moved on to screenwriting, won an award in 1996 for Best Original Screenplay from the Centre National du Cin茅ma under the Presidency of Isabelle Huppert.

3. The Primordial Soup was her first novel received praise in The Times, The Sunday Times, Independent, Publishers Weekly

1997 she dedicated herself to writing her first novel, Primordial Soup, which focuses on sex, food and faith. A critical success in 1999, The Sunday Times described it as a “remarkable debut novel”,and Publishers Weekly as “kinky, grotesque and very funny” and “not for the faint of heart.

4. Christine Leunens was also awarded a Master of Liberal Arts in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University

In 2005, Leunens was awarded a Master of Liberal Arts in English and American Literature language from Harvard University. It was Dean’s Thesis Prize in the Humanities for her work on Henry James and The Ambassadors, and a Thomas Small Prize for Academic Achievement and Character.

5. Her third novel which is A Can of Sunshine was selected by the New Zealand Herald as amongst the best books in English worldwide in 2013

Christine was granted a scholarship from the Victoria University of Wellington in 2008 to do a PhD in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her doctoral study on the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship inspired her third novel, A Can of Sunshine.

It tells the story of a young mother having problems with her mother-in-law, a lonely widow, and when she herself tragically loses her own husband in a car accident, follows the relationship between these two women over the next ten years. The novel received the support of a Creative New Zealand Quick Grant and was selected by the New Zealand Herald as amongst the best books in English worldwide in 2013.

6. Christine Leunen’s bestselling novel has been In Amber’s Wake

Christine Leunens at The Annual HUMANITAS Awards, 2020. photo by Vince Bucci, photographer

In Amber’s Wake has been Leunens best selling novel. It set against the background of the anti-nuclear movement, Springbok Tour and the Rainbow Warrior [bombing]”. This focuses on a “love triangle” and “relationships but also families and the difficulties there can be in families, which so often is hidden away”. A film adaptation which is being produced by Mimi Polk Gitlin, the producer of the Academy Award-winning film, Thelma & Louise.

7. Caging skies which is her second novel has been translated over twenty languages

Her second novel, Caging Skies which was published by Random House New Zealand in 2008. It has become an international bestseller. And a new edition appeared in 2019, along with editions from John Murray in the UK and Overlook/Abrams in the United States.

It has been translated into over twenty languages. The French translation was nominated for the Prix M茅dicis. And also  awarded to an ‘author whose fame does not yet match her talent’, and the Prix FNAC. A play adaptation of Caging Skies, written by Desir茅e Gezentsvey and directed by Andrew Foster, premiered at Circa Theatre in 2017.

8. The  2008 novel 鈥淐aging Skies鈥漺hose author is  Christine has been adapted into the hit film of 鈥淛ojo Rabbit”

Film director Taika Waititi adapted Caging Skies[ as the 2019 film Jojo Rabbit. It has been  filmed in Prague in spring 2018,starring Waititi, Roman . And others like Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson,Thomasin McKenzie, Stephen Merchant,and Alfie Allen.

Jojo Rabbit was one of the first releases by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The arthouse studio of 21st Century Fox which was  under their new ownership by Disney. The film won the People’s Choice Award at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. And  it was  also nominated for two Golden Globes.

9. Leunens received an award for the writers Guild of America 2020 award

Christine Leunens at The Annual HUMANITAS Awards, 2020. photo by Vince Bucci, photographer

She won  the Writers Guild of America 2020 Award. As well as the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Humanitas Prize for writing “intended to promote human dignity, meaning and freedom.” Both the book and the film were nominated for the USC Libraries Scripter Award 2020 and won AFI Awards.

10. The  ‘In Amber’s Wake’ which is Christine’s novel  has also been adapted in the film

The novel focuses on a love triangle and relationships. The film adaption has produced by Mimi Polk Gitlin. He has been the producer of the Academy Award winning film ‘Thelma & Louise