Born Abraham Albert Cohen in Corfu, Greece, in 1895, as part of an important Sephardic Jewish community on the island. Albert’s parents, who owned a soap factory, moved to Marseille, France when he was a child. Albert Cohen discusses this period in his novel "Le livre de ma mère" (The Book of my Mother). He studied at a private Catholic school. In 1904, he started high school at Lycée Thiers, and graduated in 1913.

In 1914, he left Marseille for Geneva, Switzerland and enrolled in Law school. He graduated from Law School in 1917 and enrolled in Literature School in 1917 until 1919. In 1919, He became a Swiss citizen. That same year he married Elisabeth Brocher. In 1921, they gave birth to a daughter, Myriam. In 1924 his wife died of cancer. In 1925, Albert became director of Revue Juive (The Jewish Review), a periodical whose writers include Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. From 1926 to 1931, he served as a civil servant in Geneva. In 1931 He married his second wife, Marianne Goss.

During the German occupation, in 1940, Albert fled to Bordeaux, then to London. The Jewish Agency for Palestine then made him responsible to establish contacts with exiled governments. On January 10, 1943, Cohen’s mother died in Marseille. That same year, he met his future third wife, Bella Berkowich. In 1944, he became an attorney for the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees. In 1947, Cohen returned to Geneva. In 1957, He turned down the post of Israeli Ambassador in order to pursue his literary career.

He is buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Veyrier, near Geneva.

Through 4 different books, Cohen's fiction can be considered as one long autobiographic-fiction. It is the story of the radiant Solal - Cohen's double - the handsome and successful civil servant of the League of Nations whose charismatic identity is a constant struggle between his Jewish roots and his social status.

His masterpiece, Belle du Seigneur, originally included the novel that was later published under "Les valeureux".

"Belle du Seigneur" is called "the book of love", and tells Solal's passionate, cruel yet realistic love affair with Ariane Deume - a married non-Jewish woman.

In 1968, the novel was prized with the French academy award. Since then, the novel is one of the biggest seller of the prestigious Gallimard white collection.