Roger Poidatz (1894 – 14 August 1976) was a French writer best known by his pseudonym, Thomas Raucat. Roger Poidatz was born in Paris and graduated from the Paris

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

, subsequently becoming a pilot in the

French Air Force The French Air and Space Force (AAE) (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace, ) is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. It was the first military aviation force in history, formed in 1909 as the , a service arm of the French Army; ...

during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, flying

reconnaissance aircraft A reconnaissance aircraft (colloquially, a spy plane) is a military aircraft designed or adapted to perform aerial reconnaissance with roles including collection of imagery intelligence (including using photography), signals intelligence, as ...

. After the war, he was sent to Japan (a WWI ally) to assist in the education of local pilots. His mission completed, Poidatz returned to Europe via China and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. During the return voyage, he revised and finished his first novel, ''L'honorable partie de campagne'' (1924, translated into English by Leonard Cline as "The Honorable Picnic"), a stylised travelogue account of his experiences and observations in Japan. Poidatz signed the book "Thomas Raucat", a French phonetical approximation of the Japanese phrase ''Tomarō ka'' ("Shall I stay overnight?"). ''L'honorable partie de campagne'' met with critical and commercial success, but Poidatz would publish only one more book, a collection of short stories that originally appeared in various French magazines published in 1927 as ''De Shang-Haï à Canton'' ("From Shanghai to

Canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...

") and re-issued in an enlarged edition in 1928 as ''Loin des blondes'' ("Far from the Blondes"). Two of Raucat's ''Loin des blondes'' short stories were

translated Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

into Dutch by Dutch writer

J. Slauerhoff Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (15 September 1898 – 5 October 1936), who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Youth Slauerhoff attended HBS (secondary school) in Le ...

and published in magazines in 1929; they were subsequently published as ''Twee verhalen'' ("Two Stories") in 1974.

Works

* ''L'honorable partie de campagne'' (1924, latest reprint 2004) * ''De Shang-Haï à Canton'' (1927, re-issued in 1928 as ''Loin des blondes'')

Sources

* Biographical notice in Le Livre de Poche edition of ''L'honorable partie de campagne'' * Wikipedia article on

1894 births 1976 deaths French male writers 20th-century French male writers {{France-writer-stub