born March 29, 1902, Joigny, Fr.
died Oct. 14, 1967, Paris
French novelist, essayist, and playwright.
His novels include The Hollow Field (1929), The Fable and the Flesh (1943), and The Transient Hour (1946). He delighted a vast public with witty tales of talking farm animals (reflecting his own farm upbringing), some of which were published in English as The Wonderful Farm (1951). Though his extravagant creations mingling fantasy and reality were long dismissed as minor, he was belatedly recognized as a master of light irony and storytelling.