After a long exodus taking them to the Caucasus on to Crimea and later by sea to Istanbul and then Venice, the family finally settled in Paris in 1920, where young Troyat was schooled and later earned a law degree.

The stirring and tragic events of this flight across half of Europe are vividly recounted by Troyat in Tant que la terre durera.

He published more than 100 books, novels and biographies, among them those of Anton Chekhov, Catherine the Great, Rasputin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan the Terrible and Leo Tolstoy.

Troyat's best-known work is La neige en deuil, which was adapted as an English-language film in 1956 under the title The Mountain.

[6] A fictionalised version of Henry Troyat is featured in the 2014–2015 Image Comics Millarworld comic book series MPH by Mark Millar and Duncan Fegredo as the former Chief Scientific Officer of France's superhuman development program and inventor of the titular "MPH" super-speed pill, who disappeared in 1984 and has been living in-hiding ever since (bar attending the occasional jazz festival).