Alexis Curvers' mother died when he was three years old and his father when he was nineteen.
Appointed a professor of rhetoric at Alexandria, he returned to Liege where he married Marie Delcourt.
In 1940, he took refuge in the south of France, where he met other writers at Mme Mayrisch, before he returned to Liège.
In 1957, his novel Tempo di Roma, rejected by Éditions Gallimard but published by Éditions Robert Laffont thanks to Marie de Vivier (pen name of Marie Jacquart, writer from Belgium) achieved great success.
[1] Tempo di Roma obtained the Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1957 and was adapted to the cinema by Denys de La Patellière in 1963 under the same title: Tempo di Roma [fr].