Chabrol, Jean Pierre

Born June 11, 1925, in Chamborigaud, Gard Department. French writer. Participant in the Resistance.

Chabrol studied at the University of Paris and became a contributor to the newspaper L’Humanité. His novel The Last Cartridge (1953) deals with the war in Vietnam; its hero is a spiritually dynamic individual who remains true to his sense of social justice. Life in a proletarian district of Paris is the subject of the novel The Wretched Settlement (Populist Prize, 1955; Russian translation, 1957). A Rabelaisian love of life is displayed in the novel The Wild Rose (1957), and historical optimism is evinced in the novel God’s Madmen (1961; Russian translation, 1963).

Chabrol’s series of novels The Rebels consists of three volumes: The Rebels (1965; Russian translation, 1969), The Beggar-woman (1966), and Better Weather (1968); the heroes of these novels take part in events of European history between Hitler’s rise to power and the victory of the Popular Front in France in 1936. The novel The Cannon “Fraternité” (1970; Russian translation, 1972) deals with the Paris Commune of 1871 and is imbued with a faith in the just cause of the universal brotherhood of the toiling masses. Chabrol’s science-fiction novel A Goat in the Desert (1975) re-creates the dramatic fate of A. d’Aubigné.