Kessel was born to a
Jewish family in
Villa Clara,
Entre Ríos, Argentina, because of the constant journeys of his father, a
Litvak physician. From 1905 to 1908, Joseph Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in
Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France in 1908. He studied in
lycée Masséna,
Nice and lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris and took part in the
First World War as an aviator. He was also an aviator during the
Second World War, in the
Free French (
342 Squadron RAF) with
RAF Bomber Command, with
Romain Gary, who was also a talented French novelist. Kessel wrote several novels and books that were later adapted into films, notably
Belle de Jour (by
Luis Buñuel in 1967) and ''L'armée des ombres'' (
Army of Shadows) (by
Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969). In 1943 he and his nephew
Maurice Druon translated
Anna Marly's song
Chant des Partisans into French from its original
Russian. The song became one of the anthems of
Free French Forces during the Second World War. Kessel also occasionally worked as a reporter, covering
Sinn Féin, the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and the
Pétain trial. Kessel was elected to the
Académie française in 1962 and died on 23 July 1979 in
Avernes,
Val-d'Oise of a ruptured aneurysm. He is buried in Paris in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse. The
Joseph-Kessel Prize (Prix Joseph Kessel) is a prestigious prize in French language literature, given to "a book of a high literary value written in French". The jury counts or has counted among its members
Tahar Ben Jelloun,
Jean-Marie Drot,
Michèle Kahn,
Pierre Haski,
Gilles Lapouge,
Michel Le Bris,
Érik Orsenna,
Patrick Rambaud,
Jean-Christophe Rufin,
André Velter and
Olivier Weber. == Bibliography ==