French · 1902–1991
French illustrator and writer who founded the clandestine Éditions de Minuit during the Occupation. Born Jean Bruller, he took his pseudonym from a mountain range in the Resistance heartland. Le Silence de la mer (1942), secretly printed and distributed, told of a German officer billeted with silent French hosts. The novella became a symbol of intellectual resistance. After the war, Bruller continued writing and illustrating, though nothing matched that first act of defiance. The pen name remained; the debut novella defined him.