French · 1910–2007
French novelist who wrote only a handful of books, all distinguished. Born Louis Poirier, he taught geography while writing fiction influenced by Surrealism. The Opposing Shore, his most celebrated novel, describes a decaying society waiting for an enemy that never arrives. He refused the Prix Goncourt in 1951. His prose is lapidary, his output small, his standards absolute. He lived nearly a century, published a memoir of his Breton childhood at ninety-two, and remained a cult figure—admired intensely by those who discovered him.