French · 1901–1976
André Malraux lived the adventures most writers only imagine. The French author fought in the Chinese civil war, organized the Spanish Republic's air squadron, and led Resistance fighters in occupied France before becoming Charles de Gaulle's Minister of Culture. His 1933 novel "Man's Fate"—winner of the Prix Goncourt—dramatized the 1927 Shanghai Uprising through characters confronting death and meaning. Malraux's fiction embodied the engaged literature he advocated: art as action.