Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse (1887-1975), born Alexis Leger in Guadeloupe, was a French poet-diplomat who published his debut poetry collection Éloges in 1911 and his breakthrough masterpiece Anabase in 1924 while serving in China. As Secretary-General of the French Foreign Office (1933-1940), he opposed appeasement, was exiled by Vichy to the US where he wrote major works like Exil and Vents, returned to France in 1957, and won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature for his visionary poetry.