CHRIS TITLEY talks to the York author whose first biography has gained him national prominence.

GEOFF Wall spent seven years with Gustave Flaubert. Then one day the French writer came back to life in front of his biographer's eyes.

It happened as Geoff sat in a caf in Rouen, Flaubert's birthplace, one mid-November afternoon. There was a statue of the writer in the market square.

"As it got dark, looking out on that figure, slightly larger-than-life on his pedestal, was very interesting. I got such a strange sense of what his physical presence would have been like.

"That big, bulky figure in his 19th century frock coat, with his droopy moustache. I was fascinated."

Experiencing a mild hallucination of this sort is a good sign for the biographer, Geoff insists. It shows you have really come to know your subject.

That is a view shared by the Whitbread Book Of The Year judges. They have shortlisted Geoff's work, Flaubert: A Life with three others in the biography section, whittled down from more than 80 entries.

It is a remarkable achievement for a first biography, and true recognition for so many years of work. Geoff a French lecturer at York University, became interested in the author after translating his master work, Madame Bovary, in 1992 for the Penguin Classics range.

That book is "the first modern novel," he said. "It's the 19th century French novel that most people still read.

"It has a powerful resonance because it's about shopping, frustration, fantasy and everyday life - and how it ought to be more romantic than it really is."

Its realistic portrayal of an adulterous affair was also very daring for the time. Flaubert was prosecuted for immorality, and acquitted.

After translating Madame Bovary, Geoff began reading the thousands of letters written by Flaubert.

Many were sexually explicit and scandalous. Normally, they would have been burnt after his death. But "his niece couldn't bear to throw anything of his away".

Geoff did not rely solely on the written word to get to know Flaubert. "The biographer needs a good pair of boots," he says, and he wore his to follow in the footsteps of his subject.

As well as visiting France, Geoff went on the same travels as the author, to Egypt and Corsica.

"Some things you can't get from printed sources, particularly a sense of place. Places actually change very slowly in some ways.

"Even a late-20th century city like Rouen, where he spent his childhood, even though it was bombed and half-destroyed: if you look above eye-level, above the shop-fronts, most of the 19th century buildings are still there.

"I went to his old school, which is still standing, and went to the dormitory where he would have slept when he was a boarder.

"When you are writing scenes you can see them, and evoke them more vividly."

Flaubert was in some ways, quite grotesque.

"He played that up. He had an elaborate comic character he played, called The Big Boy, who had a loud laugh and who was a grotesque exhibitionist. He said scandalous things. That was the game he played."

But he was also sensitive. "He clowned in order to protect that side of himself that was vulnerable.

"He had epilepsy, which began when he was in his early 20s. There's some connection between his epileptic fits and the grotesque character he played, as if he turns the affliction into a game so he can use it imaginatively, rather than be crushed by it."

Flaubert possessed a "horribly vivid imagination", fuelled by the sights he saw as a child in a home that overlooked the dissection room of his father, a surgeon. The theme of the "dangerous imagination" informed much of his work.

Geoff, who has a partner and four children and lives in The Groves, now has to decide who will be the subject of his next biography.

"You have to spend a long time with them. You don't choose lightly. It's a bit like being married to them in a way," he said.

In the meantime, he looks forward to January 4 to discover whether he has won the Whitbread Biography Of The Year prize and £5,000. If he has, the book will go forward to the grand final on January 22, with a £25,000 first prize.

"I'd love to win," Geoff said. "I think it's wide open. If I win the biography prize, I'll be absolutely delighted. I'm already delighted to be shortlisted."