Schwarz-Bart's parents, Polish Jews, moved to France in 1924. By 1941, when he was 13, they had been deported and killed by the Nazis. Young Schwarz-Bart, scarcely knowing French, was active in the Resistance movement and later, while working as a marginal labourer, taught himself to read and write French from library books. Le Dernier des justes probes the conscience of Europe during centuries of persecution and genocide of the Jewish people. It retraces the martyrdom of one of the traditional Jewish Lamed Vav Tzaddiqim (“The 36 Just Men”), Ernie Lévy, who, caught in the madness of Nazism, suffers every possible horror. The novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt.

In 1966 Schwarz-Bart, with his West Indian wife, Simone, published Un Plat de porc aux bananes vertes (“A Plate of Pork with Green Bananas”). It was the first of a cycle of novels in which the authors approach the problem of racism, tracing the historical misfortunes of blacks. Schwarz-Bart wrote La Mulâtresse Solitude (1972; A Woman Named Solitude); his wife wrote alone Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (1972; “Rain and Wind on Télumée Miracle”; Eng. trans. The Bridge of Beyond) and Ti Jean L'horizon (1979).