J. C. Mardrus

Today he is best known for his translation of the Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into French, which was published from 1898 to 1904,[1] and was in turn rendered into English by Edward Powys Mathers.

Mardrus was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1868 to a Catholic family of Armenian-descent, and studied in Lebanon before settling in Paris, France.

[citation needed] Elvira Buder (born 1918) claimed to have travelled from Egypt via Greece with Mardrus in the 1930s with the intention of attending the Sorbonne.

Soon after arriving in Paris war broke out and she found herself pregnant and in France on an Italian passport.

Buder left France for Italy when the Germans occupied Paris, although she claimed that Mardrus was not the father of her child.