Ladislas Dormandi (also known as László Dormándi; 1898–1967) was a Hungarian-born French publisher, translator and novelist who wrote in Hungarian and French.
Dormandi was born on 14 July 1898 in Dormánd, [1] a village of the Austro-Hungarian Empire located since 1918 in Hungary. In 1924, he married the artist Olga Székely-Kovács (1900-1971) whose sister Alice Székely-Kovács (1898-1939) was a psychoanalyst and the first wife of Michael Balint. [2] [3] Dormandi's first novels were published in Hungary under the name László Dormándi. [4] Between the two World Wars, he was also active as a translator and publisher, of for example Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig. [5]
In 1938, the Dormandis fled Hungary and settled in Paris. [6] During World War II, Dormandi worked for the clandestine publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit. [7] After the war, he became a successful writer in French under the name Ladislas Dormandi. He was awarded the Cazes Prize in 1953 for his novel Pas si fou. [1]
He acquired French nationality by naturalization on 8 April 1948 and died in Paris on 26 November 1967. [8] [1] Dormandi's and Olga Székely-Kovács' daughter Judith Dupont (born 1925) is a well-known French psychoanalyst. [6]