Julien Gracq

Julien Gracq (born Louis Poirier; 1910–2007) was a French writer renowned for his dreamlike novels such as The Opposing Shore (Le Rivage des Syrtes), which won him the Prix Goncourt in 1951—a prize he famously refused in protest against literary commercialism. He was closely associated with the Surrealist movement, particularly André Breton, to whom he dedicated his debut novel The Castle of Argol (1938), and taught history and geography until his retirement in 1970.