 In 1982 he won the Prix Goncourt for his novel about Pier Paolo Pasolini; and in 2007 he was elected a member of the Académie française.Fernandez was born in France on 25 August 1929, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris.He is the son of the Mexican Ramón Fernández, a literary critic whose reputation was tarnished when he served during World War II on the executive committee of the Parti Populaire Français, collaborating with France's Nazi occupiers.