Clara Malraux

It was through this work that she met contemporary French writers such as Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, Louis Aragon and André Malraux, whom she married on 21 October 1921.

In late 1923, arriving at Phnom Penh in Cambodia, they went hunting for antiquities, and were arrested, with André (who was several years younger than his wife) being given a prison sentence, which Clara managed to have overturned even though he lost his appeal on the grounds that the temple was "abandoned property".

André failed to support Clara's desire for a literary career, and in 1936 she followed him to Spain to take part in humanitarian activities linked to the Spanish Civil War.

[3] After the fall of France in 1940, Clara and her daughter headed for the zone libre, where she joined the Resistance and took part in activities such as forging documents and trying to persuade German soldiers to desert.

After the war she returned to Paris, where she began her literary career in earnest, producing novels such as Portrait de Grisélidis (1945) and La Lutte inégale (1958).