- Poet, member of the French surrealist group, friends with Jacques Prévert (who was his wife's witness at their wedding), Yves Tanguy, André Breton, inventor of the surrealist process "décollage d'affiche".
- May 25 1940, was arrested with Benjamin Peret and others by the french police for "subversive publication". Liberated by prison guards at the beginning of German offensive, he was captured by the Germans and sent to stalag XB in northern Germany.
- First was an anarchist then member of a French Trotskyst group. Trotsky's secretary Rudolf Klement, disappeared after leaving Malet's home on January 1 1938. In August 1938, parts of his body (the head was missing) were fished out of the Seine, and Léo Malet identified them.
- Tuberculosis successively killed his father Gaston Malet, his brother Marcel Malet (in 1911) and his mother Louise Refreger (in 1912), so he was raised by his maternal grandfather Omer Refreger.
- In 1984, the Société des Gens de Lettres awarded him the first Paul Féval Prize of the Popular Novel for his works.
- His son Jacques Lionel Malet was born on February 13, 1942 in Paris.
- In 1948, winner of the Prix de l'Humour noir Xavier Forneret for "Les Nouveaux Mystères de Paris".
- From 1934 to 1939 he was a newspapers seller in the streets of Paris.
- He shared with his character Nestor Burma the habit of smoking a pipe in shape of a bull's head.
- Friends with Louis Chavance, Jean Rougeul, Fabien Loris, Michel Seldow, René Magritte, Maurice Bernard Endrèbe, Michel Lebrun.
- Some of his "Poèmes Surréalistes" were dedicated to Mae West, Sylvia Sidney, Ginger Rogers, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, André Breton.
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