French author. Born 1895, died 1970.
Giono's first novels, including Regain (1930) and Le Serpent d'étoiles (1933), take place in his native countryside of northern Provence, among the peasants and herders of the mountains. In lyrical/pastoralist tones, Giono praises the simple life, in tune with nature - a theme that he reprises in L'Homme qui plantait des arbres (1954).
As a committed primitivist, he was also a pacifist. After World War II, his novels acquired a chronicle-like style, e.g. Le Hussard sur le toit (1996), which takes place during a cholera epidemic in Provence in 1838 (made into a film in 1995).