Aden, Arabie is the story of a man who attempts to flee bourgeois life in France by seeking exoticism in the Middle East. His trip is a failure; the freedom of travel is exposed as an illusion. This account is based on Nizan's own trip to Arabia and has been resurrected through the efforts of Jean-Paul Sartre. In Aden, Arabie, Nizan came to understand that everywhere-in Arabia as in France-oppressive forces drain us of our humanity.

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 Interallie in 1938. This new edition includes Walter Benjamin s critique of the book, available here for the first time in English.