Known primarily as one of the major French playwrights of the first half of the twentieth century, Jean Giraudoux scored his early literary successes with the novel, as evidenced by the fact that his Siegfried et le Limousin (1922; translated as My Friend from Limousin, 1923) was named co-winner of the Prix Balzac in 1922 (Emile Baumann's Job le prédestiné shared the honor). The previous year he had produced the fanciful novel Suzanne et le Pacifique (1921; translated as Suzanne and the Pacific, 1923) and well before that, in 1918, what amounts to his first true novel, Simon le pathétique (Simon the Sensitive). Other prose narratives of his formative years tend to defy standard classifications but can best be designated as short stories and travel notes all linked by a common thread of the author's experiences as a child in the French provinces.

Jean Giraudoux was born on 29 October...