René Barjavel born in Nyons, France, the son of a baker. In 1914, while his father served in World War I, his mother ran the bakery, and he was left alone much of the time to discover the world through exploration and reading. His his mother died of sleeping sickness in 1922, when he was just 11 years old, and he was sent to boarding school in Nyons. In 1923, when his father was unable to pay the school's fees to continue his studies, he became the protegé of the school's director, Abel Boisselier, and accompanied him to the college in Cusset. During his stay there, which lasted until he ran out of funds in 1927, he continued to study literature. After leaving school, he worked worked several jobs, including as a real estate agent and a bank employee, until 1929 when he became a journalist in Progress Allier in Moulins.
In 1935, he met the publisher Robert Denoël, and he moved to Paris to work at Éditions Denoël. In 1936 he married Madeleine de Wattripont. While working at Denoël, he continued to work as a journalist for the weekly Le Merle Blanc, where he wrote film reviews. In 1939, he joined the war with Germany and was sent to the Pyrenees, but returned to Paris when the armistice was declared and Denoël re-opened his publishing house. During this time, his first novel, Roland, le chevalier plus fort que le lion (Roland, the Knight More Proud than the Lion) (1942), was pub…
