Claude Lanzmann fought in the Resistance, opposed the war in Algeria, was Simone de Beauvoir’s lover and Jean-Paul Sartre’s friend. He played a very important role in French intellectual life and is above all known for his magisterial nine-and-a-half hour film Shoah. He tells all this and much more in his extraordinary autobiography which was launched at Jewish Book Week 2012 and explained why he called it The Patagonian Hare. Few people have managed to refuse compromises like him and...