Louis Pergaud

Born in 1882 in eastern France, Louis Pergaud became a schoolteacher before making his name as a writer. He grew up in a rural setting, and that close knowledge of village life shaped much of his fiction, especially its lively detail and feel for children's worlds.

He is most closely associated with La Guerre des boutons (War of the Buttons), a novel that has remained his best-known work. He also wrote stories about animals and the countryside, and his writing earned major recognition in France during his lifetime.

Pergaud died in 1915 during the First World War, at only thirty-three. Because of that brief life, his books often stand as both a celebration of rural France and a reminder of a generation interrupted by war.