Romain gary charles rolo essay

Lauded as one of the 20th Century’s most acclaimed works of French fiction, The Kites was written shortly before Gary’s suicide, and tells the story of two young lovers – one an orphan raised by his uncle, a gentle French kite-maker, the other a Polish aristocrat – separated by the chaos and carnage of World War Two.

He was a hero of the French resistance – and hoaxer extraordinaire, inventing a writer who went on to pen the bestselling French novel of the 20th Century. So why isn’t Romain Gary better known around the world, asks Hephzibah Anderson. Hemingway was a philandering bear-slayer who chased wars and crashed planes.

In 1945 he published his first novel, Education européenne. Immediately following his service in the war, he worked in the French diplomatic service in Bulgaria and Switzerland. In 1952 he became the secretary of the French Delegation to the United Nations.

Gary married the actress Jean Seberg in 1962, months after she gave birth to their son Alexandre (Credit: Getty Images)