Jean Basile

Jean Basile was the pen name of Jean Basile Bezroudnoff (January 5, 1932 – February 10, 1992), a French-born Canadian journalist and novelist from Quebec. A key figure in the underground counterculture of Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s, he is most noted for his "Mongol" trilogy of novels, La Jument des mongols, Le Grand Khan and Les Voyages d'Irkoutsk, and for cofounding the counterculture magazine Mainmise.

Born in Paris, France to a Russian immigrant father and a French mother on January 5, 1932, before rejoining Le Devoir in 1973.

La Jument des mongols, the first novel in his Mongol trilogy, was published in 1964. It was followed by Le Grand Khan in 1967 and Les Voyages d'Irkoutsk in 1970. Basile was a gay man, and the novels were noted for being among the first in Quebec literary history to openly address homosexuality. In an early issue of Mainmise, he also called for the creation of a gay liberation movement in Montreal.

He became director of the Éditions de l'Aurore publishing house in 1976, and later established his own publishing company, Les Éditions Jean Basile, in 1979. He joined La Presse in 1984.

He died in 1992 in Montreal.

Works Lorenzo (1963) La Jument des mongols (1964) Journal poétique, 1964-1965: Élégie pour apprendre à vivre suivie de Pièces brèves (1965) Joli Tambour (1966) Le Grand Khan (1967) Les Voyages d'Irkoutsk (1970) L'Écriture radio-télé (1976) Coca et cocaine (1977) La Culture du canabis (1979) Le Piano-trompette (1983) Iconostase pour Pier-Paolo Pasolini (1984) Adieu... je pars pour Viazma! (1987) Keepsake 1 (1992)