Pierre Loti

Biography

Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud, known as Pierre Loti, born on January 14, 1850, in Rochefort, and died on June 10, 1923, in Hendaye, was a French writer, naval officer, and member of the Académie Française. Pierre Loti, whose work is largely autobiographical, drew inspiration from his travels for his novels, for example, in Tahiti for *Le Mariage de Loti* (Rarahu) (1882), in Senegal for *Le Roman d'un spahi* (1881), and in Japan for *Madame Chrysanthème* (1887). Throughout his life, he retained a strong affinity for Turkey, where he was fascinated by the role of sensuality: he notably illustrates this in *Aziyadé* (1879) and its sequel, *Phantom of the Orient* (1892). Pierre Loti also explored regional exoticism in some of his best-known works, such as Brittany in the novels *Mon frère Yves* (1883) and *Pêcheur d'Islande* (1886), and the Basque Country in *Ramuntcho* (1897). A member of the French Academy from 1891, he died in 1923, was given a state funeral, and was buried in Saint-Pierre-d'Oléron, on the Île d'Oléron, in the garden of a house that had belonged to his family. His house in Rochefort has become a museum. Pierre Loti was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, in 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1913.