Religious scholar and novelist Michel Benoit was born in Madagascar in 1940 (then a French colony). In 1962, having studied Biochemistry under Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod and obtained a PhD in Pharmacology, he entered the Benedectine order as an unordained monk, remaining there for twenty-two years. Because of his ideological non-conformity, he eventually quit the Catholic Church and decided to devote himself to research and writing. His first book, Prisoner of God, an account of his life in the monastery, became an instant worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1992. This was followed by two religious essays, a travel book based on a trip to India and, in 2006, the thriller The Secret of the 13th Apostle, which transposes into fictional form his lifetime's research on the life of Jesus.

Religious scholar and novelist Michel Benoit was born in Madagascar in 1940 (then a French colony). In 1962, having studied Biochemistry under Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod and obtained a PhD in Pharmacology, he entered the Benedectine order as an unordained monk, remaining there for twenty-two years. Because of his ideological non-conformity, he eventually quit the Catholic Church and decided to devote himself to research and writing. His first book, Prisoner of God, an account of his life in the monastery, became an instant worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1992. This was followed by two religious essays, a travel book based on a trip to India and, in 2006, the thriller The Secret of the 13th Apostle, which transposes into fictional form his lifetime's research on the life of Jesus.