Romain Puértolas

Romain Puértolas (born 1975) is a French author. He is most noted for the bestselling French novel The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe, which has been translated into English and has become an international bestseller sold in 36 nations. This novel sold over 100,000 copies in France by August 2014 and topped French bestseller lists.

Romain Puertolas was born on December 21, 1975 in Montpellier in southern France. He is the only child of a Spanish Army colonel (his father) and a French army administrator (his mother). He was an airport controller in Madrid, Spain. Puertolas became a police officer and border guard in France at age 33. As a police officer he specialized in examining document fraud in illegal immigration networks in France. After the success of his first novel, he quit this police job in December 2014 to work on writing further novels.

In 2008, Puertolas created a series of videos "debunking magicians, illusionists and fakirs", posted to various online websites, including YouTube, Dailymotion and others. One of the many illusionists whose tricks were "debunked", stage magician David Copperfield, disliked these videos and caused Puertolas' YouTube account to be closed. These approximately 60 "Trickbusters Show" videos were produced by "Grand" Puertolas in collaboration with a Spanish engineer friend "Skeptic Munoz".