Claude Simon

in full Claude Eugène Henri Simon

born October 10, 1913, Tananarive [now Antananarivo], Madagascar
died July 6, 2005, Paris, France

writer whose works are among the most authentic representatives of the French nouveau roman (“new novel”) that emerged in the 1950s. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985.

The son of a cavalry officer who was killed in World War I, Simon was raised by his mother in Perpignan, France. After studies at Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, he traveled widely and then fought in World War II. He was captured by the Germans in May 1940, escaped, and joined the French Resistance, managing to complete his first novel, Le Tricheur (1945; “The Trickster”), during the war years. Later he settled in his hometown in southern France, where he bought a vineyard and produced wine.

In Le Vent (1957; The Wind) Simon defined his goals: to challenge the fragmentation of his time and to rediscover the permanence of objects and people, evidenced by their survival through the upheavals of contemporary history. He treated the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War in La Corde raide (1947; “The Taut Rope”) and Le Sacre du printemps (1954; “The Rite of Spring”) and the 1940 collapse of France in Le Tricheur. Four novels—L’Herbe (1958; The Grass), La Route des Flandres (1960; The Flanders Road), La Palace (1962; The Palace), and Histoire (1967)—constitute a cycle containing recurring characters and events. Many critics consider these novels, especially La Route des Flandres, to be his most important work. Later novels include La Bataille de Pharsale (1969; The Battle of Pharsalus), Triptyque (1973; Triptych), Les Géorgiques (1981; The Georgics), and Le Tramway (2001; The Trolley).

Simon’s style is a mixture of narration and stream of consciousness, lacking all punctuation and heavy with 1,000-word sentences. Through such masses of words, Simon attempted to capture the very progression of life. His novels remain readable despite their seeming chaos.