Birthday Spotlight on François Charles Mauriac

Image credit: www.poemhunter.com

François Charles Mauriac (October 11, 1885 – September 1, 1970) was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, and journalist, a member of the Académie française (from 1933), and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1952). He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1958. Mauriac was opposed to French rule in Vietnam, and strongly condemned the use of torture by the French army in Algeria.

In 1952 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life". He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1958. He published a series of personal memoirs and a biography of Charles de Gaulle. Mauriac's complete works were published in twelve volumes between 1950 and 1956. He encouraged Elie Wiesel to write about his experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust, and wrote the foreword to Elie Wiesel's book Night.

He was the father of writer Claude Mauriac and grandfather of Anne Wiazemsky, a French actress and author who worked with and married French director Jean-Luc Godard.

Among his notable poetry works were:

1909 – Les Mains jointes

1911 – L'Adieu à l'Adolescence

1925 – Orages

1940 – Le Sang d'Atys