11 Facts About Claude Simon

Claude Simon was born in Tananarive on the isle of Madagascar.

Claude Simon's parents were French, and his father was a career officer who was killed in the First World War.

Claude Simon grew up with his mother and her family in Perpignan in the middle of the wine district of Roussillon.

At 21, Simon inherited a small fortune that made him economically independent.

Claude Simon was called up by the French army in August 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Claude Simon was taken prisoner by the Germans, but managed to escape in October 1940 and joined the resistance movement.

Claude Simon published around 20 books written in a dense, autobiographical style.

Claude Simon lived in Paris and used to spend part of the year at Salses in the Pyrenees.

In 1961 Claude Simon received the prize of L'Express for La Route des Flandres and in 1967 the Prix Medicis for Histoire.

Claude Simon is often identified with the nouveau roman movement exemplified in the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor, and while his fragmented narratives certainly contain some of the formal disruption characteristic of that movement, he nevertheless retains a strong sense of narrative and character.

Claude Simon arguably has much more in common with his Modernist predecessors than with his contemporaries; in particular, the works of Marcel Proust and William Faulkner are a clear influence.