Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer, most famous for his fictional detective Jules Maigret. He was one of the most popular authors of the 20th century, selling over 500 million copies of his works during his lifetime. Apart from his detective fiction, he achieved critical acclaim for his literary novels which he called romans durs. Among his literary admirers were Max Jacob, François Mauriac and André Gide. Gide wrote, “I consider Simenon a great novelist, the greatest perhaps, and the most truly a novelist that we have had in contemporary French literature.”