Pierre Benoit (16 July 1886 – 3 March 1962) was a French novelist, screenwriter and member of the Académie française.[1] He is perhaps best known for his second novel L'Atlantide (1919) that has been filmed several times.
Pierre Benoit, born in Albi (southern France) was the son of a French soldier. Benoit spent his early years and military service in Northern Africa, before becoming a civil servant and librarian.[2] In 1914 he published his first book of poems. He then joined the French army and after the Battle of Charleroi was hospitalised and demobilised.
His first novel, Koenigsmark, was published in 1918; L'Atlantide was published the next year and was awarded the Grand Prize of the Académie française, from which he became a member in 1931.[2]
In 1923 Benoit was sent to Turkey as a journalist of Le Journal and later visited other nations.[3] During this decade, many of his novels were turned into films, including La Châtelaine du Liban.
A political right-winger, Benoit was an admirer of Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras.[2] During the Nazi Occupation of France, Benoît joined the "Groupe Collaboration", a pro-Nazi arts group whose other members included Abel Bonnard, Georges Claude and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.[4] This led him to be arrested in September 1944; he was eventually released after six months, but his work remained on the "blacklist" of French Nazi collaborators for several years afterwards.[2]
He attempted to resign from the Académie française in 1959 in protest over their refusal to accept the writer Paul Morand after his application was vetoed by General Charles DeGaulle.
Late in his life, Benoit gave a series of interviews with the French writer Paul Guimard.[2]
Each of Benoit's novels consist of exactly 227 pages and have the heroine's name begin with the letter "A".[6]
