Creator Bio
Albert Cohen
1895–1981
The French novelist Albert Cohen was born and spent his early years in Corfu, the inspiration for much of his fiction. His family moved to Marseilles in 1900, and after his baccalaureate, he moved to Geneva, where he trained as a lawyer and spent much of his life. A Zionist, he founded the short-lived journal Revue juive in 1925. During World War II, he worked in London for the Jewish Agency maintaining contacts with governments-in-exile. His major novels constitute one extended autobiographical fiction. Their protagonist, Solal, is a handsome League of Nations civil servant (as Cohen was for many years) who is torn between his Jewish loyalties and the beauty and sensuality of non-Jewish society.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Solal
In the swirling ballroom, chandeliers poured a corrosive milk over diamond-laced shoulders, and perfumes spun coils of desire between men and languid women swept round by the orchestra. Solal…
Primary Source
Her Lover (Belle du Seigneur)
Behold the Valiant, the five cousins and sworn friends, newly come unto Geneva, mark them well, these men of silver tongue, these Jews of sunnier climes and even finer words, proud to have remained…