Troyat, Henri

Troyat, Henri ŏ–rēˈ trôtäˈ [key], 1911–2007, French novelist and biographer, b. Moscow as Lev Aslanovich Tarassov. He and his family fled the Russian Revolution and settled (1911) in Paris. He was the author of numerous historical novels (including the cycle Tant que la terre durera [while the earth endures], 1946–48) and biographies of famous Russians, including Tolstoy (1965, tr. 1967), and Ivan the Terrible (1982, tr. 1986). One of France's most popular and prolific authors, Troyat, who wrote a total of 105 books, is especially noted for the lucidity of his prose. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1959.

See his autobiographical novel, Aliocha (1991); study by N. Hewitt (1984).

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