20th-century French writers

André Siegfried (April 21, 1875 – March 28, 1959) was a French academic, geographer and political writer best known to English speakers for his commentaries on American, Canadian, and British politics.
He was born in Le Havre, France, to Jules Siegfried, the French minister of commerce, and Julie Siegfried, the president of the National Council of French Women. An active member of the Democratic Republican Alliance like his father, André Siegfried was several times a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, but never won an election. On 23 January 1941, he was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France. A few months after the liberation of France in mid-1944, he was elected to the Académie française, taking the vacant seat of Gabriel Hanotaux (who had been elected in 1897). He died in Paris in March 1959.

Michel Ragon (24 June 1924 – 14 February 2020) was a French art and literature critic and writer. His primary focus was on anarchic and libertarian literature.

Jean Lacouture (9 June 1921 – 16 July 2015) was a journalist, historian and author. He was particularly famous for his biographies.

Dominique Aubier, née Marie-Louise Labiste, (7 May 1922 – 2 December 2014) was a French author.

Pierre Assouline (born 17 April 1953) is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco to a Jewish family. He has published several novels and biographies, and also contributes articles for the print media and broadcasts for radio.
As a biographer, he has covered a diverse and eclectic range of subjects, including:

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the legendary photographer
Marcel Dassault, the aeronautics pioneer
Gaston Gallimard, the publisher
Hergé, the creator of The Adventures of Tintin
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer
Georges Simenon, the detective novelist and creator of Inspector MaigretSeveral of these books have been translated into English and the Henri Cartier-Bresson biography has been translated into Chinese.
As a journalist, Assouline has worked for the leading French publications Lire and Le Nouvel Observateur. He also publishes a blog, "La république des livres".

WikipediaAssouline was the editor of La Révolution Wikipédia, a collection of essays by postgraduate journalism students under his supervision. Assouline contributed the preface.On 7 January 2007, Assouline published a blog post criticizing the Wikipedia entry on the Dreyfus Affair.

Michel de Certeau (French: [sɛʁto]; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.A multidisciplinarian, he wrote ground-breaking studies in fields as diverse as mysticism, the act of faith, cultural dynamics in contemporary society, and historiography as an intellectual practice. His impact continues unabated, with new volumes appearing regularly, and perhaps surprisingly his reputation is growing even more rapidly in English and German-speaking countries and the Mediterranean than in his native France. This strong and growing interest in academia is not matched in the public sphere; however, partly due to his being considered a "difficult" author because of his highly personal style which makes translation difficult, and partly due to the declining status of French in the world generally. Nevertheless, portions of his prolific output have been translated into a dozen languages.

Hervé Guibert (14 December 1955 – 27 December 1991) was a French writer and photographer. The author of numerous novels and autobiographical studies, he played a considerable role in changing French public attitudes to HIV/AIDS. He was a close friend of Michel Foucault.