Prou, Suzanne (1920–1995)

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Prou, Suzanne (1920–1995)

French novelist. Born in 1920; died in Paris, France, during the night of December 29–30, 1995.

She was a "novelist of bittersweet nostalgia," wrote Le Monde of Suzanne Prou when it announced her death just after Christmas in 1995. Of her two dozen novels, the best known is La Terrasse des Bernardini (The Bernardini Terrace), which was published in 1973 and won the Prix Renaudot. Wrote William Cole in the Saturday Review, "Madame Prou weaves an incredibly fine net, the strands of which are passion, deceit, sadism, pride, seduction, and burning hate." During the occupation of France in World War II, Prou helped produce an underground paper that condemned anti-Semitism. She was also a human-rights activist and ardent feminist.

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