"A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him." This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Levy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Levy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings.

About the Author
Bernard-Henri Levy is a philosopher and a writer. He is a member of the Selection Committee of the Editions Grasset, and he runs La Regle du Jeu magazine. He writes a weekly column in the magazine, Point and chairs the Conseil de Surveillance of La Sept-Arte.

Reviews
"The book's enthusiasm is infectious. It delves sympathetically into Sartre's ideas and makes a strong case for their importance."

The Economist

"This biography of the French guru is brilliant."

George Walden, The Sunday Telegraph

"Enthralling, absolutely enthralling."

Christian Sauvage, Le Journal du Dimanche

"Bernard-Henri Levy wonderfully resurrects Jean-Paul as a colossus bestriding the age...It would be hard to imagine a better translation of BHL oracular French. Andrew Brown succeeds in bringing Levy so flamingly to life as a passionately engaged and combative speaker that you can hear him holding forth on the other side of the table in the Flore or the Deux Magots"

Andy Martin, Daily Telegraph

"Sartre, who had refused all kinds of introspection, is here thoroughly revisited in both his life and work. In this journey through the century in which Sartre lived, one learns as much about the twentieth century as one does about Sartre. This is Bernard Henri Levy at his very best."

Marcel Neusch, La Croix

"Levy is seldom a less than engaging guide to the drama of the rise and fall of one of the last century's most prominent writers and thinkers"

Aengus Collins, Irish Times

Book Information
ISBN 9780745630090
Author Bernard-Henri Levy
Format Hardback
Page Count 544
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 930g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 158mm * 45mm