Born in 1887 in Switzerland, Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric Sauser) was educated in Naples, Italy. A prime catalyst of the modernist movement, he wrote stories, plays, novels and poems that earned him an international reputation and one of France's highest literary honors—Pirx Litteraire de la Ville de Paris. Cendrars also dabbled in investigative journalism and memoir, in a subjective style favoring content over time and place that could be characterized as cubist. He died in 1961.