Man's Fate is the novel most closely associated with André Malraux — a work of fiction that stands as his most notable work and that came during a career in which he also received the Prix Goncourt, France's top literary prize.

Malraux was born on November 3, 1901, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. He was educated at Lycée Turgot and Lycée Condorcet before going on to study at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. His career proved unusually wide-ranging: he worked as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, film director, film editor, journalist, art critic, and art historian, and he also worked as an archaeologist at various points. He wrote in French and in Spanish.

When the Second World War came, Malraux joined the French Resistance, a commitment for which he received the Croix de guerre 1939–1945. After the liberation of France, he served as the country's information minister between 1945 and 1946. His involvement in government continued into the following decades: during Charles de Gaulle's presidency he held the post of cultural affairs minister from 1959 to 1969. He also received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding.

Malraux died on November 23, 1976, in Créteil, just weeks after his seventy-fifth birthday. His range of activity — spanning fiction, politics, art criticism, film, and active wartime service — makes him difficult to place in any single category. What the record does show clearly is that Man's Fate, his Prix Goncourt–winning novel, and his decade-long tenure as France's cultural affairs minister under de Gaulle together represent the two most concrete anchors of a career that resisted easy definition.