Joseph Kessel was a French journalist and novelist. Kessel was born in Villa Clara, Entre R�os, Argentina, because of the constant journeys of his father, a Lithuanian doctor of Jewish origin. Joseph Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France in 1908. He studied in Nice and Paris, and took part in the First World War as an aviator. Kessel wrote several novels and books that were later represented in the cinema, notably Belle de Jour. He was also a member of the Acad�mie fran�aise from 1962 to 1979. In 1943 he and his nephew Maurice Druon translated Anna Marly's song Chant des Partisans into French from its original Russian. The song became one of the anthems of the Free French Forces during the Second World War. Joseph Kessel died in Avernes, Val-d'Oise. He is buried in the Cimeti�re du Montparnasse in Paris. The Joseph-Kessel Prize is a prestigious prize in French language literature, given to "a book of a high literary value written in french". 

February 10th, 1898 in Argentina  /  Died:   Jul 23rd, 1979