French author whose books are difficult to read as their structure is extremely complex. Two of his finest novels include “Man’s Fate,” 1934 and “Man’s Hope,” 1938; his first book was published in 1926.
When he was young, his dad committed suicide and he was brought up by three women. Malraux spent his life obsessed with death from his family experiences as well as the wars in which he fought; the Chinese revolution, the Spanish Civil War and in the French underground.
Malraux first came to prominence in 1924 when he was sentenced to three years in prison in Indochina. He was caught trying to smuggle Cambodian sculptures stolen from the temples of Angkor Wat. Malraux had lost his wife’s money in the stock market and was trying to recoup his loses.
He had married Marie-Madeleine Lioux in 1948, a concert pianist and widow of his half-brother. He was plagued by personal losses, including the deaths of his two teenage sons in an automobile accident in 1961. He’d planned to marry his longtime companion, writer Louise de Vilmorin, but she died shortly before the wedding in 1969.
He acknowledged an intermittent problem with alcohol and his drug addiction. Malraux was physically handicapped by a stroke and passed over for the Nobel Prize.
His complex novel, “Man’s Fate,” 1933, is set in China. Malraux claimed to have been personally involved in fighting between Communists and the Kuomintang in the late 1920s. He became more leftists in his politics in the 1930s, organizing an air squadron to fight with the anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He openly supported the Communist Party and wrote “Man’s Hope” about this war.
During his long career as a writer, Malraux became legendary for joining many different causes. He aided refugees from Germany and helped found the “World League Against Anti-Semitism.”
He served with the French army in WW II and was captured in 1940. Malraux escaped and joined the resistance and was captured again in 1944 but liberated shortly after with the Allied invasion. He returned to the Free French Army and helped liberate Strasbourg. After the war, Malraux became close with Andre Gide and with Charles De Gaulle, serving as minister of culture under George Pomidou.
At his death at age 75, 23 November 1976, Creteil, France, Malraux was given honors greater than any other writer in the century.
Link to Wikipedia biography