Andre Malraux

In 1922, he married Clara Goldschmidt and they were blessed with a daughter, Florence, in 1933. But, they got separated in 1938 and eventually divorced in 1947.

He went to live with Josette Clotis, journalist and novelist, in 1933. They had two sons, Pierre-Gauthier and Vincent. Unfortunately, Josette died in 1944, when she slipped while boarding a train. Their sons died in 1961 in an automobile accident.

In 1948, he tied the knot with Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist and his widowed sister-in-law. But they got separated in 1966.

He was born on November 3, 1901 in Paris, France to Fernand-Georges Malraux, a stockbroker, and his wife, Berthe Lamy.

In 1905, his parents got divorced. He was brought up by his mother, maternal aunt Marie and maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy-Romagna.

He was a nervous child with some motor and vocal twitches but it did not affect his later life or literary works.

He attended the Lycée Condorcet and the School of Oriental Languages but left formal education at an early age. Since then, he educated himself with all the knowledge he could gather from libraries and museums of Paris.

In 1923, he along with his wife, traveled to Cambodia in search of lost Khmer temples. His aim was to collect antiques from the temple and sell them to art museums at high prices. But he was arrested by the French colonial authorities for his act of removing sculptures from the temple.

He returned to his country in 1926 after finishing his jail sentence. By then, he had become highly critical of the French colonial authorities through his experiences in Indochina.

In 1928, he published his first novel ‘The Conquerors’, followed by another one in 1930, ‘The Royal Way’. Both the novels depict his experiences of Cambodia.

In 1938, he published ‘L'Espoir’ (Man's Hope), a novel influenced by his Spanish civil war experiences.

During World War II, he joined the French Army. He was captured twice by the allies but he managed to escape and joined the French Resistance.

In 1933, he published his most celebrated novel, ‘La Condition Humaine’, about the 1927 failed Communist rebellion in Shanghai. It deals with the human emotion to fight for its existence and the fact that a man determines his own fate by the choices he makes.

In 1958, he became France’s first ‘Minister of Cultural Affairs’. He proved to be an innovative and dynamic cultural administrator working to preserve France's national heritage and launching campaigns to restore the splendor of notable French buildings.