Mauriac, Claude

Born Apr. 25, 1914, in Paris. French literary critic and author. The son of F. Mauriac.

Mauriac graduated from the Sorbonne with the degree of doctor of law. From 1944 to 1949 he was the personal secretary of Charles De Gaulle, about whom he wrote in The Other De Gaulle (1970). He is the author of essays on J. Cocteau (“Jean Cocteau, or the Truth of Invention,” 1945; “Friendship Betrayed,” 1970), A. Malraux (“Malraux, or the Hero’s Misfortune,” 1946), A. Breton (“Breton,” 1949), and A. Gide (“Conversations With André Gide,” 1951).

Mauriac’s best known work is The New Literature (1958), in which he analyzes the characteristics of contemporary modernism. A cycle of Mauriac’s novels entitled The Inner Dialogue, including All Women Are Fatal (1957), The Dinner Party (1959), The Marquise Went Out at Five (1961), and L’Agrandissement (1963), belongs to the roman nouveau category.