Gracq, Julien

Julien Gracq was born in 1910 in a village of Anjou. As a Lieutenant in the French Army he was captured in the fighting around Dunkirk in 1940, but released the following year. A school teacher by profession, he taught history and geography for a period at the Lycée Claude-Bernard in Paris while Georges Perec was a pupil there. Julien Gracq (a pen-name) is the author of several novels, including The Opposing Shore, which won the Prix Goncourt.