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Photo by Stéphane Béchaud / Flammarion

Born in Cairo, Andrée Chedid spent her early years hopscotching between Egypt, Lebanon, and France. She eventually settled in Paris, where she was deemed “the lady of two rivers”—the Nile and the Seine. A prolific prose writer and playwright, Chedid claimed that poetry was her favorite form, one to which she returned “as though it were the essential spring.” She won the Prix Goncourt for poetry in 2002 and was named a Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur in 2009. She died in 2011.