The poet François (known as Franck) Venaille was born in the working-class 11th arrondissement of Paris. He received a Catholic upbringing and joined the Communist Party at a very young age following his military service in Algeria. Papiers d'identité, his first book published in 1966, looks back on this period, which he would also explore in Hourra les morts! (Obsidiane, 2003) and in L'Enfant rouge, published by Mercure de France shortly after his death in 2018.