Writer, translator, diplomat, an aviator in World War II, French resistance fighter, director, screenwriter, Romain Gary (or Emil Azar, Fosco Sinibaldi, Satan Boga – nicknames for his books) was born in Vilnius, Lithuania by Jewish parents and naturalized French in 1935. He is the only author to have won the Goncourt Prize twice, the first one for the novel “Les racines du ciel” (The Roots of Heaven, 1956) and the second one for “La vie devant soi” (The Life Before Us, 1975), which he signed as Emil Azar. He studied law, made a worldwide career as a diplomat – from Bulgaria to Bolivia and from Switzerland to New York and Los Angeles – he was made a Liberation Fellow and Brigadier General of the Legion of Honor. He made two films and saw his books adapted for cinema by directors such as Costas Gavras, Jules Dassen, and Moses Mizrachi. A cosmopolitan, a very popular (his novel “A European education” European tenure has been translated into twenty-seven languages) and a prolific writer, he committed suicide on December 2, 1980, at his home in Paris. From May 2019, his entire work was included in the Pléiade collection of Gallimard publications that brings together the most important French and foreign literary heritage works.
Writer, translator, diplomat, an aviator in World War II, French resistance fighter, director, screenwriter, Romain Gary (or Emil Azar, Fosco Sinibaldi, Satan Boga – nicknames for his books) was born in Vilnius, Lithuania by Jewish parents and naturalized French in 1935. He is the only author to have won the Goncourt Prize twice, the first one for the novel “Les racines du ciel” (The Roots of Heaven, 1956) and the second one for “La vie devant soi” (The Life Before Us, 1975), which he signed as Emil Azar. He studied law, made a worldwide career as a diplomat – from Bulgaria to Bolivia and from Switzerland to New York and Los Angeles – he was made a Liberation Fellow and Brigadier General of the Legion of Honor. He made two films and saw his books adapted for cinema by directors such as Costas Gavras, Jules Dassen, and Moses Mizrachi. A cosmopolitan, a very popular (his novel “A European education” European tenure has been translated into twenty-seven languages) and a prolific writer, he committed suicide on December 2, 1980, at his home in Paris. From May 2019, his entire work was included in the Pléiade collection of Gallimard publications that brings together the most important French and foreign literary heritage works.
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A wandering Jew, a naughty boy decorated with the Cross of Lorraine, a member of the resistance, consul general of France in Los Angeles, a saltimbag and adventurer, a Hollywood prophet but also an iconoclast supporter of De Gaulle, Roman Gary lived a life that promises the most exciting autobiography. But his book is not just about capturing the author’s thirst for ever-increasing challenges. It is, above all, a glorification of maternal love and its creative power.
