La Route des Flandres

Claude Simon (1913–2005) was a French novelist born in Tananarive, Madagascar, to French parents, raised in Perpignan after his father's death in World War I. He fought in the Spanish Civil War and World War II, was captured and escaped to join the Resistance, and published around 20 dense, autobiographical novels associated with the nouveau roman. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1985 for combining the poet's and painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in depicting the human condition.