Pierre Assouline is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco and has published several novels. He has written biographies of, among others, the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson; Hergé, the creator of The Adventures of Tintin; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer, and Georges Simenon, the detective novelist and creator of Inspector Maigret.  As a journalist, Assouline has worked for some of France’s leading publications, including Lire and Le Nouvel Observateur. He also publishes a popular blog, “La république des livres.”   A number of his biographies have been translated into English including the one we talk about here, Gaston Gallimard, A Half Century of French Publishing (Harcourt Brace, 1988).