Christine Arnothy (1930–2015)

Christine Arnothy was the pen name of Irène Kovach de Szendrö, born in Budapest to a Hungarian father and an Austrian mother who taught her French as her first language. The family survived World War II, including the siege of Budapest in 1945, and fled the city on foot afterwards, landing in the Kufstein refugee camp in Austria. The only thing Christine took with her was the daily diary of her experiences during the war years, written by candlelight, which became the basis of her most famous book, J'ai quinze ans et je ne veux pas mourir (I Am Fifteen and I Don't Want to Die). She studied at a French-speaking school in Austria and between 1950 and 1953, published several novels in Hungarian under the pseudonym Kriszta Arnóthy. She then moved to France, where she continued her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her book J'ai quinze ans won the Grand prix Verité in 1954.

Her next novels, Dieu est en retard (God Is Late, 1955) and Il n'est pas si facile de vivre (It's Not So Easy to Live, 1957), describe the travels of a stateless young woman without a passport. Other novels included Le Cavalier Mongol (1976), for which she received the Prix de la nouvelle from the Académie française. In 1964, she married Claude Bellanger, founder and publisher of the newspaper Le Parisien Libéré, with whom she had two sons.

She also published three detective novels under the pseudonym William Dickinson, as well as writing for theater, radio, and television..