Simon, Claude

(1913- )

   writer, Nobel laureate

   Born in Tananarive, Madagascar, Claude Simon, the son of a French army officer, was brought up by his mother in Perpignan and educated in Paris and England. using a stream-of-consciousness effect, with extremely long sentences (sometimes up to a thousand words), Simon, who served in the French cavalry in World War II and then the resistance, downplays character development and plot in his novels (Le Tricheur, 1945, his first novel; Le Vent, 1957; and L'Herbe, 1958), but recounts instead the complexity of human life (La Route des Flandres, 1960; Le Palace, 1962). One of the best exponents of the nouveau roman, Simon attempted to reconcile various fractured views of the world and of life as he sought to create the illusion of permanence in a turbulent society. He drew upon own military experiences and upon the theme of solitude and fragmentation, but he is less theoretical than other writers of the nouveau roman school. Simon's later works include Histoire (1967), Les Géorgiques (1981), La Bataille de Pharsale (1969), Les Corps conducteurs (1971), Triptique (1973), Leçon de chose (1975), and L'Acacia (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1985.