André Schwarz-Bart

Who was André Schwarz-Bart?

André Schwarz-Bart was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins.

Schwarz-Bart is best known for his novel The Last of the Just. The book, which traces the story of a Jewish family from the time of the Crusades to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, earned Schwarz-Bart the Prix Goncourt in 1959. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1967.

Schwarz-Bart's parents moved to France in 1924, a few years before he was born. In 1941, they were deported to Auschwitz. Soon after, Schwarz-Bart, still a young teen, joined the Resistance, despite the fact that his first language was Yiddish, and he could barely speak French. It was his experiences as a Jew during the war that later prompted him to write his major work, chronicling Jewish history through the eyes of a wounded survivor.

He spent his final years in Guadeloupe, with his wife, the novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart, whose parents were natives of the island. The two co-wrote the book Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes It is also suggested that his wife collaborated with him on A Woman Named Solitude. The two were awarded the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde in 2008 for their lifetime of literary work.