Jean-Louis Curtis
Jean-Louis Curtis (22 May 1917 – 11 November 1995),[1] pseudonym of Albert Laffitte, was a French novelist best known for his second novel The Forests of the Night (French: Les Forêts de la nuit),[1] which won France's highest literary award the Prix Goncourt in 1947. He is the author of over 30 novels.[2]
Curtis was born in Orthez, Pyrénées-Atlantiques.[2] He was one of the founders of the literary monthly La Table Ronde in 1948. He was elected to the Académie française in 1986.[2]
Martin Seymour-Smith said of Curtis in the early 1980s:
- He is one of the best of the 'conventional' novelists now writing in France, but is very uneven: he is not worried about originality of technique, and prefers to concentrate on what he can do well, which is to anatomize bourgeois societies and 'artistic' communities.[3]
The author Michel Houellebecq made a homage to him in a long passage in La carte et le territoire (prix Goncourt 2010).
Works
- Les Jeunes hommes (1946) - first novel.
- Les Forets de la nuit (1947; The Forests of the Night) - "acid portraits of those who played at being members of the Resistance"[4] Winner of the Prix Goncourt 1947.
- Gibier de Potence (1949; Lucifer's Dream) -"an acid picture of postwar Paris".[3]
- Haute École (1950)
- Chers corbeaux (1951) - "targets the Parisian bourgeoisie who had done well out of the Nazi occupation"[4]
- Les Justes Causes (1954; The Side of the Angels) about the liberation of Paris.
- L'Échelle de soie (1956)
- Un Saint au néon (1956)
- La Parade (1960) "a devastating satire on rich old provincial upper-class drones".[4]
- Cygne sauvage (1962)
- La Quarantaine (1966)
- Le Jeune couple (1967) "dealt with the splendours<sic> and miseries of .. 'consumer society'".[4]
- Le Thé sous les cyprès (1969)
- Un miroir le long du chemin (1969)
- Le Roseau pensant (1971)
- La Chine m'inquiète (1972)
- Questions à la littérature (1973)
- L'Étage noble (1976)
- L'Horizon dérobé (1978)
- La Moitié du chemin (1980) - Volume 2 of L'Horizon dérobé
- Le Battement de mon cœur (1981) - Volume 3 of L'Horizon dérobé'
- Le Mauvais choix (1984) "attacked Christian bigotry. It is his only historical novel, set in the third century AD."[4]
- Le Temple de l'amour (1990)
- La France m'épuise (1992)
- Le monde comme il va (1995)
- Andromède (1996)
References
- 1 2 Curtis, Jean-Louis. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica, Retrieved March 20, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- 1 2 3 Obituary, The New York Times, November 12, 1995
- 1 2 Martin Seymour-Smith, The New Guide to Modern World Literature, 1985. pg. 498
- 1 2 3 4 5 Quote by James Kirkup in Obituary in The Independent 14 Nov 1995.
External links
- Obituary, by James Kirkup, The Independent, 14 November 1995
- Biography, from Académie française (French)
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