Jean-Baptiste Botul

Jean-Baptiste Botul is a fictional French philosopher created in 1995 by the journalist Frédéric Pagès and other members of a group calling itself the Association of the Friends of Jean-Baptiste Botul. Originating as a literary hoax, the names of both Botul and his philosophy of ''botulism'' derive from botulism, an illness caused by the bacterium ''Clostridium botulinum''. References to Botul were first made in publications by members of the association and later turned up in texts by writers who were not party to the hoax and thought Botul was a real person, notably the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. There is now an annual Botul Prize awarded for a book that mentions Botul. Provided by Wikipedia