André Schwarz-Bart
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André Schwarz-Bart (May 28, 1928, Metz, France - September 30, 2006, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe) was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins.
Schwarz-Bart was author of what is regarded[citation needed] as one of the greatest literary works of the post-World War II period, The Last of the Just (originally published as Le Dernier des justes). The book, which traces the story of a Jewish family from the time of the Crusades to the gates of Auschwitz, earned Schwarz-Bart the Prix Goncourt in 1959. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1967.
Schwarz-Bart's parents moved to France in 1924, a few years before he was born. In 1941, they were deported to Auschwitz. Soon after, Schwarz-Bart, still a young teen, joined the Resistance, despite the fact that his first language was Yiddish, and he could barely speak French. It was his experiences as a Jew during the war that later prompted him to write his major work, chronicling Jewish history through the eyes of a wounded survivor.
Schwarz-Bart died of a complications after heart surgery in 2006. He had spent his final years in Guadeloupe, with his wife, the novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart, whose parents were natives of the island. The two co-wrote the book Pork and Green Bananas (1967). Their son, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, is a noted jazz saxophonist. [1]
[edit] Bibliography
- The Last of the Just (1959)
- Pork and Green Bananas (1967)
- A Woman Named Solitude (1972)
- In Praise of Black Women (2001)
