Joseph Kessel

Aviator, reporter, co-founder of political and literary newspaper ‘Gringoire’, Joseph Kessel became a novelist at the end of the First World War. He published his first two books, La Steppe rouge and L’Équipage, at the start of the 1920s and rapidly became one of Gallimard’s bestselling writers. Amongst the almost 80 books he published between1922 and 1975 are Belle de jour, which inspired Luis Buñuel’s 1967 movie of the same name, Le Lion (The Lion) and Les Cavaliers (The Horsemen). He died in 1979.