Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon was born on 3 October 1897 and came up through the French avant-garde, co-founding the surrealist review Littérature with André Breton and Philippe Soupault in the movement's founding years. He wrote poetry and novels, but his trajectory bent sharply political: he joined the Communist Party and became one of its most visible literary voices for the rest of his life, a commitment that outlasted surrealism's implosion and the Party's own convulsions. He was elected to the Académie Goncourt and from 1959 onward became a frequent Nobel nominee, a recognition that never quite arrived.…