Yves Navarre; Award-Winning French Writer

Yves Navarre, 53, one of France’s leading contemporary writers. Navarre, who had lived for many years in Canada, wrote more than two dozen novels, several plays and children’s books. Open about his homosexuality, he frequently explored the subject in his writings but disliked being described as a homosexual writer. In 1991 he wrote a love story dealing with AIDS, “Friends Gone With the Wind.” Navarre won France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, in 1980 for his novel “Le Jardin d’Acclimatation” (“The Zoological Garden”), and in 1992 was honored for his body of work by the prestigious French Academy. On Monday in Paris, a suicide.