Raymond Roussel

Eccentric writer Raymond Roussel was born in Paris, France in 1877. Although Roussel's works are very difficult to translate due to the complexity of their wordplay and his own attempts to translate them to the stage failed, he had a strong influence on a group of experimental Parisian writers known as OuLiPo, and on artists such as Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp. He died in Palermo, Italy in 1933.