Ferenc Molnár (1878-1952), born Ferenc Neumann, was born in Budapest into a wealthy Jewish family. He took the pseudonym Molnár (“miller”), from the name of a character in one of his first plays: he would write more than thirty, including Liliom (1909), which would triumph on Broadway, then in Hollywood (Fritz Lang, 1934). A war correspondent in 1914-1916, he was decorated by Emperor Franz Joseph. Fleeing fascism and persecution, he took refuge in Switzerland in 1939, then in New York in 1940. Only three of his ten novels have been published in French. He is best known for The Paul Street Boys (1906), often compared to La Guerre des boutons, a classic that remains popular in Hungarian literature.
