Georges Simenon.

In 1905, the Simenon family moved to the Outremeuse neighborhood of Liège, where Georges Simenon spent most of his childhood. His father, Désiré Simenon, worked as an accountant for an insurance company; his mother, Henriette Brüll, was of German and Dutch ancestry and a distant descendant of robber Gabriel Brühl. The family took in lodgers to supplement income, and young Simenon interacted with apprentices and students of various nationalities, giving him an early cosmopolitan outlook. In September 1914, he began attending the Jesuit Collège Saint-Louis, but dropped out in June 1918. Simenon supported himself through odd jobs until January 1919, when he was hired as a journalist by the Gazette de Liège, covering human-interest stories and frequenting bars and cheap hotels for information. Alongside his journalism, he attended lectures on police technique by criminologist Edmond Locard.

In 1930, Simenon wrote the first Maigret story during a boat trip in the Netherlands, published the following year. Between 1931 and 1972, he produced 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring detective Jules Maigret. Earlier, in 1921, his first novel was published, and in 1922 he moved to Paris with his girlfriend Régine Renchon, immersing himself in working-class Parisian settings that appeared in his books. In 1928, a journalistic sea voyage sparked his love of water travel; in 1929 he had the boat Ostrogoth built for travel through French canals. During the 1930s, he went on assignments across Africa, eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Soviet Union; in 1933 he interviewed exiled politician Leon Trotsky in Istanbul. After World War II, he faced accusations of collaboration with German authorities, and in 1950 was temporarily forbidden to publish—a sentence not enforced. Simenon moved to Canada and the United States in 1945, learning English and continuing to write. In 1952, he became a member of the Académie Royale de Belgique. He left the US in 1955, settling in Switzerland.

In 1922, after his father’s death, Simenon moved with Régine Tigy Renchon to Paris; they married later. In 1929, he began a decades-long affair with housekeeper Henriette Boule Liberge, who joined his travels. He divorced Tigy in 1949 and married his former secretary Denyse Ouimet in 1950; she was 17 years younger. They separated permanently in 1964, and his later mistress was his housekeeper Teresa. Simenon had three children: Marc, John, and Marie-Jo. In 1978, his daughter Marie-Jo committed suicide at age 25, which deeply affected him. He underwent surgery for a brain tumor in 1984. Simenon died in his sleep in Lausanne on September 4, 1989, at age 86.

The 2019 UNESCO Index Translationum ranks Simenon as the 17th most translated writer globally, above Astrid Lindgren and Pope John Paul II. His Maigret series has been adapted into numerous films, television series, and radio shows, making him one of the most adapted authors of the 20th century. He wrote some 250 novels under his own name, which have been read by over a billion readers worldwide. Simenon created the detective Jules Maigret and remains a prolific Belgian novelist whose work continues to be widely published and adapted.