Tuesday, October 3, 2006

POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe (AFP): French author Andre Schwarz-Bart, winner of the 1959 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Le dernier des Justes", has died in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe aged 78, following a heart operation, his family said Sunday.

Born in the northeastern French town of Metz, the writer of Polish Jewish ancestry came to live in the French Overseas Department of Guadeloupe in the 1970s.

The novel that won him the prestigious prize at the age of 31 was a literary transposition of the Holocaust tracing the destiny of a Jewish family from the first crusade to Auschwitz.

Andre Schwarz-Bart is survived by his wife Simone, a native of Guadeloupe, and his saxophonist son Jacques.

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