Jean Bruller Vercors

Real name Jean Bruller, French writer (Paris, 26. II. 1902 – Paris, 10. VI. 1991). An engineer by profession, he worked as a cartoonist for children and an illustrator and book designer. Participant of the Resistance Movement. Co-initiator of the Éditions de Minuit publishing house, which during the war illegally published publications of the Movement, for example his novel Le Silence de la mer (1942), about an educated German officer and his futile attempt to get closer to the French family where he lives. Restrained and concise in style, the novel is both a psychological study of the occupiers and a metaphor for the Resistance Movement. The problem of the bestial in man was thematized in the novel Les Animaux dénaturés (Les Animaux dénaturés, 1952), with the motif of finding a living lost link between man and ape, and the novel The Horses of Time (Les Chevaux du temps, 1977) behind calm expressions and a measured tone reveals the drama of a tragic vision of human existence. He also wrote novels, plays and essays.