The Wall: (Intimacy) and Other Stories (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Jean-Paul Sartre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811201902 ISBN 13: 9780811201902

Publisher: New Directions, 1969

Synopsis

One of Sartre’s greatest existentialist works of fiction, The Wall contains the only five short stories he ever wrote. Set during the Spanish Civil War, the title story crystallizes the famous philosopher’s existentialism.

'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor―seemingly there for the men's solace―their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail. And as the morning draws inexorably closer, the men cross the psychological wall between life and death, long before the first shot rings out. This brilliant snapshot of life in anguish is the perfect introduction to a collection of stories where the neurosis of the modern world is mirrored in the lives of the people that inhabit it . This is an unexpurgated edition translated from the French by Lloyd Alexander.

About this title

About the Author:

Jean-Paul Sartre was a prolific philosopher, novelist, public intellectual, biographer, playwright and founder of the journal Les Temps Modernes. Born in Paris in 1905 and died in 1980, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964―and turned it down. His books include Nausea, Intimacy, The Flies, No Exit, Sartre’s War Diaries, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and the monumental treatise Being and Nothingness.

Review:

“Leaves Lady Chatterley’s Lover asleep at the post.”
- Punch

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1969
• ISBN 10: 0811201902
• ISBN 13: 9780811201902
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 144