Jean Giono

Jean Giono (30 March 1895 – 8 October 1970) was a French author who wrote works of fiction mostly set in the Provence region of France.

First period

He was born to a family of modest means, his father a cobbler of Piedmontese descent and his mother a laundry woman. He spent the majority of his life in Manosque, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Forced by family needs to leave school at the age of sixteen and get a job in a bank, he nevertheless continued to read voraciously, in particular the great classic works of literature including the Bible, Homer's Iliad, the works of Virgil, and the Tragiques of Agrippa d'Aubigné. He continued to work at the bank until he was called up for military service at the outbreak of World War I, and the horrors he experienced on the front lines turned him into a lifelong and ardent pacifist. In 1919, he returned to the bank, and a year later, married a childhood friend with whom he had two children. Following the success of his first novel, Colline (1929) (which won him the Prix Brentano and $1000, and an English translation of the book), he left the bank in 1930 to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis.