Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) was a French writer, physician, essayist and member of the Académie française, best known for Civilisation, the Vie et aventures de Salavin cycle and the Chronique des Pasquier. A leading figure of French literature between the wars, he was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1918 for Civilisation.
Born in Paris in 1884, Duhamel studied medicine while devoting himself to literature from an early age. In 1906, together with Charles Vildrac and several artists, he helped found the Abbaye de Créteil, a literary and artistic community that sought to invent a new way of living and creating collectively.
Called up as a doctor during the First World War, Duhamel served as a surgeon in field hospitals. This harrowing experience fed several of his first major books, among them Vie des martyrs and Civilisation. Far from any martial heroism, he describes the suffering of the wounded and the ravages of the conflict with restraint and compassion.
From 1920 he embarked on the Vie et aventures de Salavin cycle, opening with Confession de minuit. Through his character Louis Salavin, Duhamel explores solitude, moral doubt and the difficulty of finding one's place in modern society.
His other great novelistic undertaking is the Chronique des Pasquier, published between 1933 and 1945. In ten volumes, this vast family saga follows the fortunes of a French family at the turn of the twentieth century and stands as one of its author's major works.
Elected to the Académie française in 1935, Duhamel also developed in his essays a critique of mechanisation, materialism and modern civilisation, defending a profoundly humanist conception of culture.
Georges Duhamel died in 1966. A doctor turned writer, an observer of the upheavals of his age and a novelist of the individual conscience, he left an important body of work marked by humanism, moral reflection and the experience of war.
