She won the Prix Goncourt for Les bagages de sable (translated as "Bags of Sand"), about a concentration camp survivor.

[1][2][3] When she turned 17, she married Jakub Rajs, and they traveled to Belgium in 1938 to attend the Ecole Polytechnique de Verviers.

[2] After marrying Aron Langfus in January 1948, who graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Prague as an engineer, the two of them had a daughter, Maria, in 1948.

In the novel, Maria travels from Paris to Poland so that she can "resurface", but she deals with much despair due to thoughts of her dead relatives.

[2] Langfus used a male narrator in Saute, Barbara as an attempt to distance the novel from her personal life.