French author Henri Troyat dies, aged 95

PARIS, March 5 (Reuters) Henri Troyat, one of the great figures of modern French literature and one of France's most popular biographers, has died at the age of 95, the Academie Francaise said today.

Troyat, author of more than 100 works, mainly novels and biographies, was the dean of the august Academie Francaise and won France's top literary award, the Prix Goncourt almost 70 years ago in 1938.

He was born in Moscow on November 1, 1911, as Lev Tarasov, the son of a prosperous businessman, but grew up in France after his family fled Russia at the revolution.

His biographies, including lives of Tolstoy, Catherine the Great and Chekhov, had huge success and were widely translated. His novels included the trilogy 'As long as the earth lasts' and 'L'Araigne', for which he won the Goncourt at the age of 27.

Known for his prodigious output, he famously wore out the carpets in front of the desk where in his younger years he wrote standing up. He published his most recent work, a biography of the Russian novelist Boris Pasternak, last year.

''A day without writing gave him a feeling of sin,'' his friend and fellow member of the Academie Maurice Druon wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in a tribute to mark his death.

Sometimes dismissed as populist, he was far removed from the more avant garde schools of French literature but wrote ''a clear, simple language, one that lasts,'' Druon said.

He never revisited Russia but often wrote about the country of his birth, saying that he had constructed ''an interior Russia'' in his own mind and that to go back would risk ''impoverishing my dream'' REUTERS PDM ND1556