François Mauriac

Educated in Bordeaux and at the École des Chartes in Paris, Mauriac explored the dark claustrophobia, greed, and spiritual torment of the provincial Bordeaux bourgeois landowning class. In Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927) and Le Nœud de vipères (1932), he created unforgettable studies of sin, guilt, and divine grace.

Elected to the Académie Française in 1933, he wrote for the clandestine resistance press (Les Éditions de Minuit) in World War II under the pseudonym Forez. In his legendary weekly Bloc-Notes in Le Figaro and L'Express, he used his moral authority to fiercely denounce torture in the Algerian War and support Charles de Gaulle.