Pierre Loti

Pierre Loti was the pen name of Julien Viaud, a French naval officer who rose to captain and wrote from every port the service sent him to — Turkey, Senegal, Tahiti, Japan. Elected to the Académie française at forty-one over Zola, he filled his house at Rochefort with a mosque and a Gothic hall, and his Japanese novel became the seed of Madama Butterfly.