Sartre, a life by Annie Cohen-Solal

Sartre, a life by Annie Cohen-Solal

Annie Cohen-Solal's Sartre is a remarkable achievement. Four years in the writing, it is the definitive biography of a man and an age, an intimate portrait of a complex life. "A sensation" upon its publication in France, as the New York Times reported, Sartre was widely praised throughout Europe and became an immediate best-seller, appealing to the broadest audience despite its complexity.

The story of Sartre is indeed the story of our time. From his classic prewar French education and through the war years, when he suddenly became aware of the major political issues, Sartre's personal history traces Europe's own transformation. Involving himself early in the Resistance to the Nazi Occupation, Sartre became increasingly politicized until, in the postwar years, he led the debate over the future of Europe and the nature of its reconstruction.

Later he became involved in the fate of the third world, placing himself in the forefront of dozens of political battles and earning himself the enmity of many on the right in France and elsewhere. In spite of the relative eclipse of his last years, Sartre remained the symbol, not only in Europe but throughout the world, of the engaged intellectual, a thinker who fought desperately to be involved in the realities that surrounded him. One of the accomplishments of this biography has been not only to place Sartre in the context of history but to reopen the question of his role and to reassess the full import of his literary and political accomplishments.

Annie Cohen-Solal, known for her biography of Paul Nizan, has accomplished an extraordinary feat of research and narrative. Discovering untold aspects of Sartre's private and political life, she weaves together all the elements of an exceptional career. From the fascinating description of Sartre's hitherto unknown father to the painful last moments of Sartre's own declining years, this is a biography on the grandest scale, fully deserving of the praise it has received.

Initially commissioned by Pantheon as a book to be written for an international audience, Sartre will be published in every major European language in the coming year.

Details

• Hardcover, bound
• Condition: Very good, no notes or stamps, does not lose any pages, dust jacket has here and there a fold or tiny tear (see photos) 
• ISBN: 0394525256
• Publishing house: Pantheon Books, 1987 (first American edition)