Jean Giono
Jean Giono was born in Manosque, in southeastern France, in 1895. He was largely self-taught. His experiences serving as an infantryman in World War I set the stage for his pacifism in World War II. In 1939, Giono spent two months in jail for pacifist activities. He was blacklisted by French Liberationist writers, although Andre Gide came to his defense, and in 1954, he was elected to the Academie Goncourt.
Borrowing from Edmund White, in his introduction to Jean Giono's transitionary novel Melville, a new reader to Jean Giono should be ready for unrivaled mystical power and a non-anthropocentric foregrounding of nature. We're so accustomed to character-driven plot that it's hard to even conceive of character as background. But this is crucial to understanding the world Giono depicts.