Max Jacob was born a Jew, in Quimper, Brittany in 1876. He made his home in Paris and was deeply involved in the literary, artistic and cultural revolution of his time. He is one of the most important and influential French writers and poets of the century and a great master of the prose poem, notably in Le Cornet a dès , 1917. Among his closest friends and colleagues in the early years were Picasso and Apollinaire. His published works also include novels and essays and many posthumous volumes of correspondence. In the later part of his life Jacob retired to the monastery at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire: he had converted lo Catholicism in 1915. He died, wearing the yellow star, at Drancy concentration camp, in 1944, but he retained his faith to the end, his last words being ‘Je suis avec Dieu’.