Maurice Dekobra

[1][3] In spite of this, and the publication of a biography by Philippe Collas in 2001, he was declared a "total unknown"[1] in 2005, though the republication of La Madone des Sleepings by the publisher Zulma[4] in 2006 has increased awareness of him, at least in France.

[5] At the age of 19, he started his career as a trilingual journalist – French, English, German.

He attributed the origin of his pen name to an episode in North Africa when he saw a snake charmer with two cobras.

Allegedly he began thinking of the "deux cobras", which led him to De-kobra, then Dekobra.

[1] One of these, Opération Magali (1951) won the Prix du Quai des Orfèvres.