Delteil, Joseph (1894-1978). French writer. His first novel, Sur le fleuve Amour (1923), was a racy adventure-story in whose title it is difficult to see just the name of the Asian river. He was one of the early Surrealists but was expelled from the group after winning the Prix Fémina for Jeanne d'Arc (1925). His abandonment of literature in 1930-1 has been attributed both to ill health and to l'amour fou. He resumed his literary career after World War II with such works as Jésus II (1947), François d'Assise (1960), the intriguingly titled La Cuisine paléolithique (1965), which relies on the imagination of a primitive universe, and La Deltheillerie (1968).

— Keith Aspley

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.