Jean Marcel Adolphe Bruller (26 February 1902 – 10 June 1991) was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded the publishing company Les Éditions de Minuit with Pierre de Lescure. Born to a
Hungarian-Jewish father,[1][2] he joined the
Resistance during the World War II occupation of northern France and his texts were published using the pseudonym Vercors (a reference to the Resistance: see
Battle of Vercors).
Colères (translated into English as The Insurgents) is about the quest for immortality.[4] In 1960 he published Sylva, a novel about a
fox who becomes a woman, inspired by
David Garnett's novel Lady into Fox (1922). The English-language version, translated by his wife
Rita Barisse, was a finalist for the 1963
Hugo Award for Best Novel.[5]
His historical novel Anne Boleyn (1985) presents a very intelligent Anne as having determinedly set about marrying
Henry VIII of England in order to separate England from Papal power and strengthen England's independence.
^Cristina Solé Castells, "Vercos and the Second World War" in Manuel Bragança & Peter Tame (ed.), The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016, Berghahn Books (2015), p. 175