Volume 37, Number 16 · October 25, 1990
L'Homme Révolté
By John Weightman
The Conspiracy
by Paul Nizan, translated by Quintin Hoare, with afterword by Jean-Paul Sartre
Verso, 255 pp., $18.95
As far as I can ascertain, the novel under review is only the second of Nizan's works to appear in English translation in the past fifteen years, and its publication was perhaps timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the writer's death in May 1940. The book itself dates from 1938, and although it is an interesting text, well worth reading in this excellent version, I doubt whether such an apparently minor work would have attracted the attention of an American publisher at this late stage had Nizan's posthumous career not been surrounded by very unusual circumstances. The main fact that has kept his name alive was his early association with Jean-Paul Sartre; the two became schoolfellows in their late teens and were—with some periods of estrangement—close friends until their early twenties, after which their paths diverged. Nizan has certainly benefited to a degree from Sartre's fame and posthumous championship, but at the same time his identity has so long been entangled with Sartre's, and with Sartre's opinions about him, that it is rather difficult to see him separately in his own right. However, the effort has to be made if we are to understand the significance of La Conspiration.
Review, 5742 words
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