Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French novelist and short-story writer of the naturalist generation, admired for the warmth and immediacy of his observational prose. He is perhaps best remembered today for the devastating cholera-thriller of pain and medical science, In the Land of Pain (La Doulou), drawn from his own illness.

A bon vivant of the Paris literary world and friend of Zola and Goncourt, Daudet described the deep Midi, Parisian life and the tragedy of his own syphilis with a mixture of gaiety and courage. His works from Letters from My Windmill to Tartarin of Tarascon remain classics of French humour.