René Crevel

Born in Paris on August 10, 1900, René Crevel was a French writer closely linked to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He studied literature and law, then moved into avant-garde circles, where he became known for fiction and essays that mixed psychological insight, provocation, and dark humor.

Crevel's writing often drew on personal struggle as well as artistic rebellion. His books are remembered for their frank treatment of the self, sexuality, and the pressures of bourgeois society, and he stood somewhat apart within surrealism for the importance he gave to the novel as a form.

He died in Paris on June 18, 1935, at only thirty-four. Though his life was short, he remains an important figure in modern French literature, admired for work that is at once intimate, experimental, and deeply unsettling.