Joseph Kessel - Biography

Joseph Kessel (10 February 1898 – 23 July 1979) was a French journalist and novelist.

He was born in Villa Clara, Entre Ríos, Argentina, because of the constant journeys of his father, a Lithuanian doctor of Jewish origin. Joseph Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France. He studied in Nice and Paris, and took part in the First World War as an aviator.

Kessel wrote several novels and books that were later represented in the cinema, notably Belle de Jour (by Luis Buñuel in 1967). He was also a member of the Académie française from 1962 to 1979. In 1943 he and his nephew Maurice Druon translated Anna Marly's song Chant des Partisans into French from its original Russian. The song became one of the anthems of the Free French Forces.

Joseph Kessel died in Avernes, Val-d'Oise. He is buried in the Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris.

Partial bibliography

• La steppe rouge (1922)
• L'équipage (1923)
• Les captifs (1926; Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française)
• Nuits de princes (1927)
• Belle de Jour (1928; it inspired Luis Buñuel's 1967 movie of the same name)
• Vent de sable (1929)
• Fortune carrée (1932)
• La Passante du Sans-Souci (1936; turned into a movie by Jacques Rouffio in 1982)
• Hollywood, Ville mirage (Gallimard, NRF, 1936)
• L'Armée des ombres (1943; turned into a movie by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969)
• Bataillon du ciel (Sky Battalion), (1946; turned into a movie by Alexandre Esway in 1947): Free French SAS paratroopers in Brittany in Summer 1944
• Le tour du malheur (1950)
• Le lion (English translation: The Lion; 1958)
• The Magic Touch (novel), also published in USA as The Man with the Miraculous Hands (1962)
• Les cavaliers (1967)
• Partout un ami (1972)
• Des hommes (1972)
• Les temps sauvages (1975)
• The escape

External links

• Biography at the Académie française
• Plaisir Litteraire: [1] an interesting contribution about the youth of Joseph Kessel's father