A French novelist and essayist born in Paris in 1948, the grandson of Polish-Jewish immigrants, Henri Raczymow taught literature for many years before turning to writing full-time. A resident at the Villa Médicis in 1980–1981, he has published some twenty books, mostly with Gallimard, including Contes d'exil et d'oubli (Tales of Exile and Forgetting, 1979), Un cri sans voix (A Cry Without Voice, 1985), Le Cygne de Proust (Swan's Way; Northwestern University Press, 2014), Dix jours « polonais » (Ten "Polish" Days, 2007) and Eretz (2010). In 2008 he received the Fondation du Judaïsme français literary prize.
