Joseph Kessel

Joseph Kessel (1898-1979) was a French writer, journalist and roving reporter, author notably of L’Équipage, L’Armée des ombres, Le Lion and Les Cavaliers. A tireless traveller and witness to the great upheavals of the twentieth century, he drew on his experiences of war, his reporting and his encounters to feed his work.

Born in Argentina into a family of Russian origin, Joseph Kessel spent part of his childhood in Russia before settling in France. Enlisting in the air force during the First World War, he drew on this experience for L’Équipage, published in 1923. Alongside his career as a novelist, he became one of the great figures of French reportage, travelling across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

During the Second World War, Kessel joined the Resistance and then made his way to Free France in London. With his nephew Maurice Druon, he wrote the French lyrics to the Chant des partisans in 1943, set to music by Anna Marly. His novel L’Armée des ombres, devoted to the clandestine fighters of the Resistance, was published during the war.

After 1945, he resumed his travels and published several of his most celebrated works, among them Le Lion in 1958 and Les Cavaliers in 1967, inspired by Afghanistan and considered one of his great adventure novels.

Elected to the Académie française in 1962, Joseph Kessel left behind a considerable body of work, poised between the novel, testimony and reportage. His direct and generous prose, his taste for adventure and his attentiveness to individual destinies made him one of the great French writer-reporters of the twentieth century.