VERCORS

   Pseudonym used by French artist, illustrator and writer Jean-Marcel de Bruller (1902-1991) for all his publications from 1942 on, including his first novel, Le silence de la mer (1942; trans Cyril Connolly as Put Out the Light 1944 UK); to publish this he founded the French Resistance press Les Editions de Minuit. After WWII he wrote several moral fables in amanner influenced by Albert Camus (1913-1960). Les Animaux denatures (1952; trans Rita Barisse as You Shall Know Them 1953 US; vt Borderline1954 UK; vt The Murder of the Missing Link 1958 US) deals with the discovery of a new species of ape-man (APES AND CAVEMEN) and the deliberate murder of an infant by its human father to provide a test case in which he hopes to establish the rapidly uplifted species' claim to human status; he wins, and is acquitted of murder as the act preceded the declaration of humanity. Coleres (1956; trans Rita Barisse as The Insurgents 1957) deals with the search for IMMORTALITY by a man whoattains it at great personal cost. Sylva (1961; trans Rita Barisse 1962 US) is an inversion of David GARNETT's Lady into Fox (1922): here a vixenis changed into a woman by an English bachelor but eventually reverts. V's postwar allegorical fictions, though thought-generating and occasionally moving, never challenged the fame of his first novel, which is somewhat unfairly the only one for which he is remembered outside France. As an illustrator - which work he signed as Bruller - he showed a rollicking good humour; his illustrations for Andre MAUROIS's Patapoufs et Filifers (1930 chap; trans Norman Denny as Fattypuffs and Thinifers 1941) appear inboth French and English versions.

   JC

   See also: SUSPENDED ANIMATION.