Matters of Life and Death

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EW men live the sort of life they imagine for themselves in the boldest daydreams of youth. André Malraux (1901–1976) was one of the few. Swashbuckling was his primary vocation; shouldering his way into the world’s most perilous corners, loving the test of nerve, loving even more the general adulation for his feats of dar- ing, he seemed to spend his days swinging from chandeliers with rapier in hand, after the Douglas Fairbanks manner. And of course he wrote, often about himself and men like him, the intimate companions of violent death. As one learns from Olivier Todd’s fascinating biography, he was fond of quoting Napoleon’s proclamation, “My life is quite a novel.” One of Malraux’s two best novels, Todd concludes, was “his own staggering, rollicking life.”

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About the Author

Algis Valiunas

Algis Valiunas is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of Churchill’s Military Histories.

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EW men live the sort of life they imagine for themselves in the boldest daydreams of youth. André Malraux (1901–1976) was one of the few. Swashbuckling was his primary vocation; shouldering his way into the world’s most perilous corners, loving the test of nerve, loving even more the general adulation for his feats of dar- ing, he seemed to spend his days swinging from chandeliers with rapier in hand, after the Douglas Fairbanks manner. And of course he wrote, often about himself and men like him, the intimate companions of violent death. As one learns from Olivier Todd’s fascinating biography, he was fond of quoting Napoleon’s proclamation, “My life is quite a novel.” One of Malraux’s two best novels, Todd concludes, was “his own staggering, rollicking life.”