Abel Posse
Abel Parentini Posse was born on 7 January 1934, in the Argentine city of Córdoba where he only lived the first two years of his life. Two years after birth the family moved to the capital city of Buenos Aires due to his father's work commitments. His mother, Elba Alicia Posse, belonged to the creole landed oligarchy of Galician descent who held vast sugar mill estates in the North West province of Tucuman. Amongst the influential members of the Posse clan in the 19th century, the liberal Julio Argentino Roca stands out, twice president of the republic from 1880 to 1886 and also 1898 to 1904 (3). Posse fictionalized 19th century Tucuman in his novel El inquietante día de la vida (2001), where two distant family relatives are the protagonists; his maternal great-grandfather, Felipe Segundo Posse, and Julio Victor Posse, patron of the arts in the sugar producing province until the 1940s.
Paul Alexis
Alexis was born at Aix-en-Provence. He attended the Collège Bourbon where he first learned of Zola, who was himself a graduate. At the direction of his parents he studied law at the University of Aix, but he longed for the life of a writer, and finally left Aix-en-Provence for Paris. He arrived in the capital in 1869 where he quickly became acquainted with Zola and his family. He contributed articles to a number of newspapers including "L'Avenir national", "La Cloche", "Le Corsaire," "Le Cri du peuple" (under the pseudonym Trublot), "Gil Blas,", "Le Journal", "La Réforme", "Le Recueil", and "Le Voltaire". He wrote novels in the naturalist style as well as several plays, some of which were written in collaboration with Oscar Méténier.