French novelist, diplomat, playwright. Morand is best known for his short story collections Ouvert la Nuit (1922) and Fermé la Nuit (1923), and for his novels Tendres Stocks (1921), with a preface by Proust, and L'Europe galante (1925), all of which are for the most part impressionistic studies of night life in Europe between the wars. In later years Morand turned his attention to the study of racial and social groups, as in Black Magic (1928) and Living Buddha (1927), and of cities, as in New York (1936).