Frédéric Louis Sauser better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.
He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds

La Chaux-de-Fonds

La Chaux-de-Fonds is a Swiss city of the district of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, a few kilometres from the French border. After Geneva and Lausanne, it is the third largest city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of...

, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, to a bourgeois francophone family. Initially, they attempted to send young Frédéric to a German boarding school, but he ran away.