Romain Gary

Romain Gary (French: [gaʁi]; 21 May [O.S. 8 May] 1914 – 2 December 1980), born Roman Kacew and also known by pen names such as Émile Ajar, was a French diplomat, novelist, film director and World War II aviator of Lithuanian Jewish origin. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt under two different names. 2Early life Gary was born Roman Kacew (Yiddish: קצב‎, Russian: Рома́н Ка́цев) in Vilnius, Lithuania (at that time in the Russian Empire). In his books and interviews, he presented many different versions of his parents' origins, ancestry, occupation and his own childhood. His mother, Mina Owczyńska (1879—?), was a Russian actress from Švenčionys and his father was a businessman Arieh-Leib Kacew (1883—1942) from Trakai, also a Lithuanian Jew. Arieh Leib abandoned the family in 1925 and remarried. Gary later claimed that his actual father was the celebrated actor and film star Ivan Mosjoukine, with whom his actress mother had worked and to whom he bore a striking resemblance. Mosjoukine appears in his memoir Promise at Dawn. When Gary was fourteen, he and his mother moved to Nice, France. Converted to Catholicism by his mother, Gary studied law, first in Aix-en-Provence and then in Pari