Malraux, André (Georges) (1901-1976)

French writer, art critic, and politician. An active antifascist, he gained international renown for his novel La Condition humaine/Man's Estate (1933), set during the nationalist/communist revolution in China in the 1920s. L'Espoir/Days of Hope (1937) is set in Civil War Spain, where he was a bomber pilot in the International Brigade. In his revolutionary novels he frequently depicts individuals in situations where they are forced to examine the meaning of their own life. He also made an outstanding contribution to aesthetics with La Psychologie de l'art (1947-49), revised as Les Voix du silence/The Voices of Silence (1951).

Political career

Work Episodes of his early career provide the background for many of his novels. An archaeological mission he undertook in Cambodia in 1923 furnished material for La Voie royale/The Royal Way (1930). Les Conquérants/The Conquerors (1928) is set in a revolutionary situation in China, while L'Espoir vividly records many episodes of the Spanish Civil War. Malraux's other novels include Le Temps du mépris/Days of Contempt (1935), on the theme of a Czech communist in the hands of the Gestapo, and Les Noyers de l'Altenburg/The Walnut Trees of Altenburg (1943), which, though unsuccessful as a novel, is important for understanding the author's philosophy. (The manuscript of Les Noyers was smuggled out of occupied France and first published in Switzerland; the manuscript of a second volume fell into the hands of the Gestapo, was destroyed, and Malraux said it would never be rewritten.)

Among his other works are Lunes en papier/Paper Moons (1921), La Tentation de l'Occident/The Temptation of the West (1926), Royaume farfelu/The Mad Realm (1928), Esquisse d'une psychologie du cinéma/Sketch for a Psychology of the Cinema (1946), Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale/The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture 1952-55, and La Métamorphose des dieux/The Metamorphosis of the Gods (1957). He published several volumes of autobiography, including Antimémoires/Anti-memoirs (1967).