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.