François Mauriac

François Mauriac (1885-1970), French novelist and Nobel laureate, born in Bordeaux, and educated at the University of Bordeaux and at the École des Chartes, Paris. He began his literary career as a poet, but achieved his greatest success as a novelist. His first novels, Le baiser au lépreux (A Kiss for the Leper, 1922) and Genitrix (1923), published together in English translations as The Family (1930), won wide critical and popular acclaim. Later novels, including The Desert of Love (1925; trans. 1929), Thérèse (1927; trans. 1928), and Vipers' Tangle (1932; trans. 1933), rank among the finest works of fiction produced in the 20th century. Among Mauriac's other writings are plays, notably Asmodée (1938; trans. 1939), the philosophical What I Believe (1963; trans. 1963), the biography De Gaulle (1964; trans. 1966), and critical works.

A profoundly religious Roman Catholic, Mauriac was chiefly concerned in his novels with basic moral conflicts. The desires of the flesh, offering no real satisfaction, are shown in tragic opposition to an essential human longing for a spiritual life. Acutely aware of the darker sides of human nature, he is unsurpassed in his psychological analyses of men and women struggling against the evil in themselves. An extraordinary stylist, Mauriac showed a remarkable gift for evoking an emotionally charged atmosphere. He was elected to the French Academy in 1933 and awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in literature and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1958.