Julien Gracq

Julien Gracq (1910-2007) was born Louis Poirier. The pen name he eventually adopted is a combination of Julien Sorel, from Stendhal's The Red and the Black, and the Gracchi brothers of the Roman Republic. A history and geography teacher for much of his life, Gracq published his first book in 1938, The Castle of Argol, which André Breton praised as the first surrealist novel. In 1951, Gracq won the Prix Goncourt for The Opposing Shore, but refused it out of disdain for the literary establishment. He is one of the few writers whose complete works were published during their lifetime by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, France's most prestigious collection of classic authors.