Acclaimed French writer Julien Gracq dies

Julien Gracq, who was considered one of France's leading writers of the 20th century and was known for his surrealist style, has died at 97.

The writer, whose real name was Louis Poirier but was renowned by the pen name Gracq, passed away Saturday in a hospital in Angers in northwestern France.

President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed him as "one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century, who far from the worlds of fashion and society built up a system of original thought and a powerful body of work."

Gracq was a poet, novelist, playwright and critic whose literary debut came in 1938 with At Argol's Castle, published at his own expense. It sold about 150 copies nevertheless and was praised by the leader of the Surrealist movement, Andr Breton, who became a friend.

Gracq won acclaim for his 1950 masterpiece The Opposite Shore (Rivage des Syrtes), about collective suicide in an imaginary landscape. A year later, he shocked the literary world by turning down the prestigious French literary award the Goncourt.

An extremely private man, to the point of reclusiveness, Gracq spent much of his life in the house of his grandfather and had been living alone since his sister died in 1996.

He famously refused an invitation from then president Franois Mitterrand to dine at the lyse Palace with the visiting British monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

Gracq was born in 1910 in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil on the banks of the Loire River in western France.

Gracq trained as a teacher in the early 1930s and was a prisoner of war in Germany during the Second World War. He continued teaching untilretirement in 1970.

He wrote 20 works, the last Entretiens (Interviews) in 2002. While they didn't sell well, they brought consistent critical acclaim.

Gracqwas one of the few writers to have his work published in his own lifetime by the prestigious La Pliade collection.

"The work of Julien Gracq is haughty but Louis Poirier is humble," said TV journalist Jerome Garcin, one of the few people to have interviewed the author.