Nimier, Roger (1925-61). The central figure of the right-wing Hussards group of French writers, Nimier was important both as a novelist and as a literary journalist. His novels, Les Épées (1948), Le Hussard bleu (1950), and Les Enfants tristes (1951), cultivate a tone of harsh cynicism towards World War II and the post-war era which masks a poignant sense of emptiness. In his evocation of an impossible heroism, his work draws strongly upon the writers of the 1920s, particularly Morand, and upon Stendhal, for whose revival in the 1940s he was in large part responsible. As a journalist, he was a major contributor to La Table Ronde, La Parisienne, and Arts, and a distinguished editor of Opéra and Le Nouveau Fémina.
[Nicholas Hewitt]
