Robert Merle

Robert Merle (28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist.

Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was killed in 1916 in the Dardanelles. Young Merle and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended three lycées and the Sorbonne.

Merle was professor of English Literature at several universities until the outbreak of the second world war in 1939. During World War II Merle was conscripted in the French army and assigned as an interpreter to the British Expeditionary Force. In 1940 he was in the Dunkirk evacuation on the beach of Zuydcoote — which he called a "blind and abominable lottery" — and was captured by the Germans. Merle was taken prisoner to Stalag VID at Dortmund, and escaped, but was recaptured at Belgian customs. He was repatriated in July 1943, and after the war was awarded the Croix du Combattant.