François Lelord is a medical psychiatrist. His three earlier books recounting the adventures of Hector were international bestsellers. Lelord now splits his time between Paris and Thailand, where he works as a psychiatrist for the Alain Carpentier Foundation, and continues to write.

Hector is reasonably happy with his life. Nonetheless, his work as a psychiatrist has become increasingly tiring; his wife, Clara, works too hard; his children are grown up and have left home; he doesn’t feel young but then he’s not old either. So he’s generally contented and hopes his existence will carry on unchanged.
But, then, his patients make him see things differently: Sabine, the stressed-out sales manager; Olivia, the teacher who desperately wants a lasting relationship; Tristan, the fund manager whose department has been slashed; and even Leon, who’s had enough of toiling in the kitchen of a top restaurant. Change — or the urge to change — has reached epidemic proportions!
Everyone seems to be undergoing a midlife crisis, torn between the knowledge that it will soon be too late, that time is running out, and the feeling that it is still possible to experience something new. And everyone wants a new life. Will Hector, too, succumb, when he meets Ophélie, a journalist?
François Lelord keeps up the suspense throughout this fourth book in which he narrates the adventures of Hector, his recurring hero and perhaps his mouthpiece. To help his hero face the current crisis, Lelord has boosted his self-deprecating sense of humour.

• Written in the same vein as the first book in the Hector series which sold more than 200,000 copies.
• The film adaptation Hector and the Search for Happiness, directed by Peter Chelsom, and starring Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Toni Colette and Christopher Plummer, is expected to be released shortly.
• This light-hearted comic novel explores the questionings and moods of middle age, as seen through the eyes of a psychiatrist with a deadpan sense of humour.