Dormandi was born on 14 July 1898 in
Dormánd, a village of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire located since 1918 in Hungary. In 1924, he married the artist
Olga Székely-Kovács (1900-1971) whose sister
Alice Székely-Kovács (1898-1939) was a psychoanalyst and the first wife of
Michael Balint. Dormandi's first novels were published in Hungary under the name László Dormándi. Between the two World Wars, he was also active as a translator and publisher, of for example
Thomas Mann and
Stefan Zweig. In 1938, the Dormandis fled Hungary and settled in Paris. During World War II, Dormandi worked for the clandestine publishing house
Les Éditions de Minuit. After the war, he became a successful writer in French under the name Ladislas Dormandi. He was awarded the
Cazes Prize in 1953 for his novel
Pas si fou. Dormandi's and Olga Székely-Kovács' daughter
Judith Dupont (1925–2025) was a well-known French psychoanalyst. == Bibliography ==