The Return of Romain Gary, Novelist, Diplomat, War Hero, Prankster

In 1980, sensational headlines announced the suicide of Romain Gary, the best-selling and critically acclaimed French novelist, diplomat, war hero, literary prankster, and jet-set adventurer. In the decades that followed, his worldwide reputation dwindled to a bare flicker of recognition, and his books fell out of print. Lost as well was the memory of their Vilna-born Jewish author, an immigrant to France who would bear witness to Hitler’s war against the Jews from the cockpit of the aircraft bombers he flew for the Free French forces of Charles de Gaulle.

Indeed, many of Gary’s novels unfold against the backdrop or the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust; in them, his characters grapple with anti-Semitism, ethnic prejudice, social ostracism, and the dangers of historical forgetting and denial—all laced with the wit, irony, and suspense of a master storyteller.

It’s therefore heartening that the neglect may be starting to lift. Last year saw the release by New Directions of the first English translation of his final novel, The Kites, completed shortly before his death, and the rerelease of his well-known memoir, Promise at Dawn (1961). Last winter, a new movie based on the memoir came out in France, featuring the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.