Roger Poidatz

Roger Poidatz (1894 – 14 August 1976) was a French writer best known by his pseudonym, Thomas Raucat.

After the war, he was sent to Japan (a WWI ally) to assist in the education of local pilots.

During the return voyage, he revised and finished his first novel, L'honorable partie de campagne (1924, translated into English by Leonard Cline as "The Honorable Picnic"), a stylised travelogue account of his experiences and observations in Japan.

Poidatz signed the book "Thomas Raucat", a French phonetical approximation of the Japanese phrase Tomarō ka ("Shall I stay overnight?").

L'honorable partie de campagne met with critical and commercial success, but Poidatz would publish only one more book, a collection of short stories that originally appeared in various French magazines published in 1927 as De Shang-Haï à Canton ("From Shanghai to Canton") and re-issued in an enlarged edition in 1928 as Loin des blondes ("Far from the Blondes").