Author: Paul Nizan
With an intro by Jean-Paul Sartre
Translated by Joan Pinkham
Hardcover
Publisher: Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 1968
Page Count: 335
One’s ears pick up when Jean-Paul Sartre describes an author this way: He is a young monster. A beautiful young monster like themselves who shares their terror of dying and their hatred of living in a world we have made for them. Zing!!! Go JPS!
What prompted this? The book is an anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist screed, written some 30 years earlier by a high school classmate of Sartre’s, Paul Nizan. Appalled at what he saw in and beyond the French colony/presence in Aden, he had the crushing realization that there are oppressive hierarchies everywhere! No!!! There are apparently no unspoiled Edens!!! So, he wrote a book that tears into the State and the bourgeoisie and calls for pure hatred and unceasing revolution. One can see how this would appeal to the young radicals of the late 1960s, and their fellow traveler in Sartre. It has the value of the portrait of Aden and Arabia in the 1930s, in its high-quality invective, and of its unwitting reveal of reality challenged youth. As a guide to anything in response, it is lost.
Condition: Good in all aspects. Some discoloration on the inside front cover.
Author: Paul Nizan
With an intro by Jean-Paul Sartre
Translated by Joan Pinkham
Hardcover
Publisher: Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 1968
Page Count: 335
One’s ears pick up when Jean-Paul Sartre describes an author this way: He is a young monster. A beautiful young monster like themselves who shares their terror of dying and their hatred of living in a world we have made for them. Zing!!! Go JPS!
What prompted this? The book is an anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist screed, written some 30 years earlier by a high school classmate of Sartre’s, Paul Nizan. Appalled at what he saw in and beyond the French colony/presence in Aden, he had the crushing realization that there are oppressive hierarchies everywhere! No!!! There are apparently no unspoiled Edens!!! So, he wrote a book that tears into the State and the bourgeoisie and calls for pure hatred and unceasing revolution. One can see how this would appeal to the young radicals of the late 1960s, and their fellow traveler in Sartre. It has the value of the portrait of Aden and Arabia in the 1930s, in its high-quality invective, and of its unwitting reveal of reality challenged youth. As a guide to anything in response, it is lost.
Condition: Good in all aspects. Some discoloration on the inside front cover.
