The Age of Reason

Published in the journal “October,” the novel “The Age of Maturity” is the first part of an unfinished tetralogy “Roads of Freedom” (1945–1949). The novel’s central idea became the search for absolute freedom by the heroes. The main theme is loneliness. This vice consumes not only twenty-year-old Russian emigrants—martyrs of youth—Boris and Ivish, brother and sister, tormented by idleness, or the handsome homosexual Daniel, but also an absolutely normal thirty-four-year-old man who has reached the age of maturity—the age of morality, Mathieu Delarue.

Jean-Paul Sartre (Jean-Paul Sartre) 1905–1980

A French philosopher, writer, and publicist. One of the largest thinkers of the 20th century. Born in Paris. He graduated from the philosophy faculty of the Sorbonne; for several years he taught in lyceums. During the Second World War, he was an active participant in the French Resistance and spent nine months in Nazi prisons. After the war, he refused teaching and devoted himself entirely to writing. In literature Sartre acted as an ideologist of left-radical extremism; following his principles, in 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize awarded to him for his contribution to world literature. Over time, he reconsidered his views and moved away from communist ideas.