Cayrol, Jean-Raphael-Marie-Noel

▪ 2006

      French poet, novelist, and essayist (b. June 6, 1911, Bordeaux, France—d. Feb. 10, 2005, Bordeaux), was a pioneer in the French avant-garde nouveau roman (“new novel”) of the 1950s. Cayrol's experiences in the French Resistance (1941–43) and in Nazi concentration camps (1943–45), notably Mauthausen in Austria, formed the heart of many of his artistic creations. The suffering he underwent in Mauthausen inspired his best-known volume of poems, Poèmes de la nuit et du brouillard (1946), many of which he wrote in the camp; his seminal essay Lazare parmi nous (1950); and his prizewinning trilogy of novels, Je vivrai l'amour des autres (1947–50). He was also chief literary consultant to the publishing house Éditions du Seuil and collaborated with French film director Alain Resnais on the award-winning Holocaust documentary Nuit et brouillard (1955; Night and Fog). Cayrol was elected to the Académie Goncourt in 1974.

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