Jean Malaquais

He was born as Wladimir Jan Pavel Malacki[1] in Warsaw in 1908 of a non-religious Polish family of Jewish descent.

[3] He was associated with, though not formally a member of, several French leftist organizations, including the Trotskyist Communist League, and during the Spanish Civil War he joined the Republican forces as a member of the militia columns of the left Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM).

He obtained the Prix Renaudot in 1939 for his novel Les Javanais, based on his experience as an immigrant mine worker in Provence; it was admired by André Gide, who made Malaquais his private secretary.

In 1943, he succeeded in leaving France with the assistance of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee bound for Mexico, and, eventually the United States, where he became a naturalised citizen; his parents died in Nazi Germany concentration camps.

His most famous work, about an international group of exiles in Vichy France, was Planète sans visa (1947), which has been translated into many languages.