Henri Barbusse

French author (1873-1935)

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Lived 1873–1935, aged 62France

France WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
54 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1873–1935
Aged 62
Known for
The Ghost That Never R…
1930

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

A French novelist who went from pacifist poet to frontline soldier to communist true believer — and along the way wrote the World War I novel that taught Hemingway and Remarque how to write about war.

Biography

About

Barbusse started in the 1890s as a Symbolist poet and slid into neo-Naturalist fiction, respectable but unremarkable. Then 1914: the pacifist volunteered for service, earned the Croix de guerre, and came back with Under Fire in 1916 — a novel drawn from the trenches that became the seed text of the Lost Generation, the book that showed a generation of writers what the war actually looked like on the page. The experience radicalized him. He decided revolution against the imperialist governments was the only way to kill militarism for good, joined the French Communist Party, and spent the next t…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Henri Barbusse

Henri Barbusse

said1935

His history is a series of victories over a series of tremendous difficulties.

— About Joseph Stalin, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man (1935), p. 275.

Henri Barbusse

said1935

The dead do not survive except upon earth. Wherever there are revolutionaries, there is Lenin.

— About Joseph Stalin, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man (1935), p. 275.

Henri Barbusse

saidundated

War! Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again under their breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of the age, and perhaps of all ages.

Henri Barbusse

saidundated