André Demaison

André Demaison

André Demaison (17 January 1883 – 19 September 1956) was a French writer who won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1929.

Biography

André Demaison was born in Bordeaux. In 1903, at the age of 20, he is hired by Maurel & Prom, a trading company located in French West Africa. It was in Casamance, where he was posted, that he acquired the mastery of several African languages including Diola, Mandinka and Wolof. Then he set up his own business, chartered a schooner and became a collector of wild animals for the Antwerp Zoo in Belgium. This activity, which familiarized him with the entire coast of West Africa as far as Nigeria, inspired him to write his future book La Nouvelle Arche de Noé.

He returned to France and voluntarily joined the Troupes coloniales in 1914. His knowledge of African languages quickly made him assigned as an interpreter to the Senegalese Tirailleurs' corps and during the summer of 1916, during the Battle of Verdun, he was found at Tavannes with his unit.

After the war and under the leadership of René Doumic, he proved to be a prolific writer on the themes of African civilizations and the often surprising interactions between man and wild animals. It is in this last field, particularly with the publication of the Le Livre des bêtes qu'on appelle sauvages in 1929, that he achieved great notoriety. He is also the author of the guide to the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition. In addition, he made major reports, particularly in the United States for the Paris-Soir daily newspaper directed by Pierre Lazareff, during the 1930s.

Appointed Director of National Broadcasting under the Vichy regime in 1942, he was also a member of the National Council. Convicted by the courts in 1945, he was finally pardoned and rehabilitated into the Order of the Legion of Honour where he had obtained the rank of officer before 1940. He continued to publish after the war, notably at the Presses de la Cité. His work has been translated into English in the United States, including his novel La Nouvelle Arche de Noé (The New Noah's Ark), published by Macmillan, which was recently reprinted. Another well-known volume, Le Livre des bêtes qu'on appelle sauvages (Beasts Called Wild), had already been published by Farrar and Rinehart in New York in 1930.

He died in Maule.

Works

• 1924 : Diato, roman de l'homme noir qui eut trois femmes et en mourut (novel)
• 1924 : La femme et l'homme nu (with Pierre Mille)
• 1925 : La Reine de l'ombre
• 1925 : Les oiseaux d'ébène
• 1927 : Le Pacha de Tombouctou
• 1928 : Un voyage moderne à travers notre continent austral
• 1929–38 : La Comédie animale
  • 1929 : Le Livre des bêtes qu'on appelle sauvages (Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française)
  • 1930 : La Comédie animale
  • 1934 : D'autres bêtes qu'on appelle sauvages
  • 1938 : La Nouvelle Arche de Noé
• 1931 : Diaeli, le livre de la sagesse noire
• 1932 : Faidherbe
• 1933 : Tropiques (1938 edition illustrated by Robert Louis Antral)
• 1933 : Menaces dans le ciel
• 1934 : La Revanche de Carthage
• 1935 : Le jugement des ténèbres
• 1936 : Le péché contre l'amour
• 1936 : Le jeu des 36 bêtes
• 1939 : Pardon des termites
• 1939 : Terre d'Amérique
• 1940 : Intrigues de la forêt
• 1941 : Latitudes
• 1941 : Trois histoires de bêtes
• 1942 : Le Sens du conflit
• 1943 : Déluge
• 1948 : L'Étoile de Dakar
• 1949 : Terre de personne
• 1949 : Espaces
• 1950 : La comédie des animaux qu'on dit sauvages
• 1951 : La comédie animale : trois nobles bêtes (illustrated by Odette Denis)
• 1953 : Le Livre des enfants sauvages
• 1956 : La vie des noirs d'Afrique du Sénégal au Congo
• 1956 : La comédie des animaux

External links

• Works by André Demaison at Gallica
• Works by André Demaison at JSTOR