Roman Kacew was born May 8, 1914, probably in Moscow but possibly in Kursk, in the shadows of the Russian Revolution. His mother, Nina Owczinski, was a Russian Jew from Kursk, in western Russia, just north of the Ukrainian border. She had broken ties with her family to become a stage actress working in a Muscovite troupe that performed French theater. The identity of Kacew’s father is not known, though the patronymic Kacew is owed to Nina Owczinski’s first or second husband, Lebja Kacew, from whom she separated shortly after her son’s birth. (It is generally accepted that Roman never...

Having adopted a French spelling of his first name, “Romain Kacew” signed his first publications in 1935: two short stories, “L’orage” and “Une petite femme,” appeared in the French paper Gringoire. Neither has been reprinted, an anomaly for a writer who in the course of his career would often publish the same piece in two or three venues or recycle entire novels for republication decades later under different forms and titles.

In “L’orage,” a sullen stranger’s arrival on a remote colonial island disrupts the lives of a French doctor and his wife, Hélène. Kacew’s description of the couple’s failed marriage—...

In 1956, Gary finally provided Gallimard with the “big, beautiful novel” he was struggling to produce: The Roots of Heaven, a 443-page epic adventure set in France’s West African colonies. One of the first conservationist novels in Europe, it recounts a loner’s quest to educate the public and media concerning endangered species (in this case, elephants). With its condemnation of the ivory trade and safari hunts presented as a symbolic blueprint for 1950s activism, the hero’s mission is set against a larger backdrop of characters struggling to reconstruct a meaningful, humane universe in the wake of the Holocaust. Where Tulipe,...

Responding to the “Marcel Proust Questionnaire” was something of a rite of passage for French writers on their way to celebrity. Gary participated with more or less goodwill, naming Bob Dylan as his favorite musician and “running away” as his most admired military feat. To the question, “Where would you like to live?” he answers: “Everywhere and in everything, with a million lives” (“Romain Gary,” Cent écrivains 139).

But, even if Gary possessed the material means in the sixties and seventies to maintain residences in Majorca, Switzerland, and Paris and on the French Riviera, living a million different lives is...

Looking to pursue his aesthetic vision on a more ambitious scale, Gary began plotting a new pseudonymous episode. It is clear from biographical and textual evidence that a project was already under way in 1972. A longtime friend of Gary’s, Sacha Kardo-Sessoëff, recalls that Gary proposed a collaboration in which Kardo-Sessoëff would sign his name to detective novels written by Gary. A Bulgarian friend was also solicited (Bona 318). The fact that Gary sought the participation of friends implies that he planned to have another person play the role of this pseudonymous invention. In other words, Gary was planning to...

Gros-Câlin had garnered enough support to be a serious contender for the 1974 Renaudot Prize. When Madame Rosa surfaced the following year, Ajar’s adventure escalated another notch. One of the first to review the book, Jacqueline Piatier, set the bar very high. Reminding readers that Gros-Câlin had been “the most original and seductive novel of [last] season,” she went so far as to speak of Madame Rosa as being a Les Misérables for the twentieth century, while Max-Pol Fouchet compared Ajar’s second novel to Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night.¹ Ajar also made converts of some of the...

On the day of his death, Gary mailed legal arrangements dating from August 1980 to Robert Gallimard, with whom Gary had just shared lunch. In his apartment, Gary left letters where his companion, Leïla Chellabi, would find them: some were addressed to those closest to him, and one was a communiqué for the press. As for Pavlowitch, he was bound by prior agreement to preserve Ajar’s secret even after Gary’s death. It was evident that Gary’s suicide was long-premeditated.

For Pavlowitch, however, remaining hostage to his role as Ajar was an untenable personal and professional situation. Like the trained poodle...