André Schwarz-Bart

Schwarz-Bart's parents moved to France in 1924, a few years before he was born. His first language was Yiddish and he learned to speak French on the street and in public school.[1] In 1941 his parents were deported to Auschwitz. Soon after, Schwarz-Bart, still a young teen, joined the Resistance. It was his experiences as a Jew during the war that later prompted him to write his major work, chronicling Jewish history through the eyes of a wounded survivor.

He spent his final years in Guadeloupe, with his wife, the novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart, whose parents were natives of the island. The two co-wrote the book Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes (1967). It is also suggested that his wife collaborated with him on A Woman Named Solitude.[2][3] The two were awarded the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde in 2008 for their lifetime of literary work.[4]

He is best known for his novel Le Dernier des justes (translated into English as The Last of the Just). The book, which traces the story of a Jewish family from the time of the Crusades to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, earned Schwarz-Bart the Prix Goncourt in 1959. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1967.

He died of a complications after heart surgery in 2006.

One of his two sons with his wife Simone is Jacques Schwarz-Bart, a noted jazz saxophonist.

• (1959) Le Dernier des Justes; published in English translation as The Last of the Just (1960)
• (1967) Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes, with Simone Schwarz-Bart. This work has not been published in English but a literal translation of the title would be "A Plate of Pork with Green Bananas."
• (1972) La Mulâtresse Solitude; published in English as A Woman Named Solitude (1973)
• (1989) Hommage à la femme noire in collaboration with Simone Schwarz-Bart; Published in English as In Praise of Black Women (2001)
• (2009) L'étoile du matin; published in English as The Morning Star (2011)

• Hunter, Michelle (2000) Simone Schwarz-Bart

• Obituary in the International Herald Tribune