The Conspiracy
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The Conspiracy is the last and most acclaimed novel by French writer and activist Paul Nizan, who died two years after its publication fighting the Germans at the Battle of Dunkirk. Hailed by Jean-Paul Sartre as Nizan’s masterpiece, the book centers upon the figure of Bertrand Rosenthal, a misguided philosophy student studying in pre-war Paris. Eager to foment a revolution and having little grasp of his own motives, Rosenthal draws a small group of disciples into a conspiracy both fatuous and deadly. Simultaneously, he plunges into a forbidden—and ultimately tragic—love affair as the intertwined plots move inexorably toward their twin destinations of betrayal and death.
The Conspiracy won the coveted Prix Interallié in 1938. This new edition includes Walter Benjamin’s critique of the book, available here for the first time in English.
Paul Nizan
Paul Nizan was born in Tours, France in 1905, the son of a railway engineer. A close friend of Sartre at the Lyc�e Henri IV and at the Ecole normale sup�rieure, he joined the Communist Party in the late 1920s and became one of its best-known journalists and intellectuals. His works include Aden, Arabie; Les Chiens de Garde; Antoine Bloy�; and Le Cheval de Troie. In 1939, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nizan left the party and was killed the following year in the Battle of Dunkirk fighting against the German army.
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Quintin Hoare
Translated by
Quintin Hoare is the director of the Bosnian Institute and has translated numerous works by Sartre, Antonio Gramsci, and other French authors. He lives in the United Kingdom.
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