Career
Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked on a suburban newspaper. After publishing several books under his own name, from 1952 he wrote children"s books under the pseudonym Paul Berna. The brothers collaborated on Zoupette en camping, Les Contes des mille et une nuits and Nous irons à Lunaterra.
His most famous book, Le Cheval sans tête, usually known in English as A Hundred Million Francs, was published in 1955.
lieutenant concerns the adventures of a gang of street urchins from the slums of Paris whose plaything, a headless horse on wheels, is used as a hiding-place by train robbers. lieutenant has been translated into several languages, enjoying great success in Britain and the United States.
In 1963, the Disney Studios in Britain filmed the book as The Horse Without a Head: The 100,000,000 Franc Train Robbery, scripted by T. East. B. Clarke and starring Jean-Pierre Aumont and Herbert Lom. The Mystery of the Cross-eyed Manitoba was read on Jackanory in 1968 by Keith Barron.
Paul Berna also wrote science fiction novels, the best known being Louisiana Porte des étoiles (Threshold of the Stars) and its sequel Le Continent du Ciel (Continent in the Sky).
Foreign his adult novels he used the pseudonyms Bernard Deleuze and Paul Gerrard, and for detective fiction, Joel Audrenn. In 1958, Jean Sabran married Jany Saint-Marcoux, herself an author of Rouge et Or books for children. At the end of his life he suffered from blindness.