French · 1888–1948
French novelist and polemicist whose Catholic faith drove fierce fiction and fiercer politics. Born in Paris, educated by Jesuits, he fought in World War I and supported monarchist causes before breaking with the right over Franco's atrocities in Spain. His novels—Diary of a Country Priest, Under the Sun of Satan—portray spiritual struggle with psychological intensity. Priests battle demons, not metaphorically. His essays attacked collaborators and bourgeois Christianity alike. The prose burns with conviction; the faith admits no easy comfort.