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Maurice Dekobra (26 May 1885, Paris – 1 June 1973, Paris) was a French writer. His real name was Ernest-Maurice Tessier.[1][2]
Viewed[by whom?] as a subversive writer in the 1920s and 1930s, he became one of the best-known French writers between the First and the Second World Wars.[1] His books have been translated into 77 languages, and he has been described as an early example of an international best-seller writer. This is particularly true of his best known work, La Madone des Sleepings (1925).[1][3]
In spite of this, and the publication of a biography by Philippe Collas in 2001, he was declared a "total unknown"[1] in 2005, though the republication of La Madone des Sleepings by the publisher Zulma[4] in 2006 has increased awareness of him, at least in France.[5]
At the age of 19, he started his career as a trilingual journalist – French, English, German.[1] During the 1914–18 War he was attached as liaison officer/interpreter first to the Indian army, and later to the United States army. The contacts he made at this time ignited his passion for travel. He attributed the origin of his pen name to an episode in North Africa when he saw a snake charmer with two cobras. Allegedly he began thinking of the "deux cobras", which led him to De-kobra, then Dekobra. The term 'dekobrisme' was coined from his fiction, which used journalistic features in his novels.[1] He chose to live in the United States from 1939 to 1946.[1] Upon returning to France, he started writing whodunits.[1] One of these, Opération Magali (1951) won the Prix du Quai des Orfèvres.[2]
Some of his novels were made into films.[6]
