Troubled Sleep: A Novel [Paperback]

Jean-Paul Sartre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 1992

Powerfully depicts the fall of France in 1940, and the anguished response of the French people to the German occupation. Translated from the French by Gerard Hopkins.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English
Original Language: French

From the Inside Flap

Powerfully depicts the fall of France in 1940, and the anguished response of the French people to the German occupation. Translated from the French by Gerard Hopkins.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (July 7, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679740791
• ISBN-13: 978-0679740797
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #417,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, playwright, and biographer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His major works include "No Exit," "Nausea," "The Wall," "The Age of Reason," "Critique of Dialectical Reason," "Being and Nothingness," and "Roads to Freedom," an allegory of man's search for commitment, and not, as the man at the off-licence says, an everyday story of French country folk.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the last great fictional statements of man in search of meaning..., April 6, 2009

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Mark Nadja "Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore... (New York City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Troubled Sleep: A Novel (Paperback)

The capstone to Sartre's monumental *Roads to Freedom* trilogy, *Troubled Sleep* is in itself a magnificent novel and a fitting conclusion to a series that forever remains unfinished, as Sartre had planned but never completed at least one additional volume. Here several storylines--and lives--developed in the first two books are resolved, the direction of others suggested, and the rest left provocatively open to the reader's imagination.

I've read all three novels in succession over the last couple of weeks and found each one as riveting as the other. In *Troubled Sleep,* the French have already lost the war without much of a fight and now must come to grips with their defeat. Do they collaborate, rebel, retreat further from active engagement with the politics of the world? Do they rationalize their cowardice or is it perfectly rational to acknowledge the apparent superiority of the victorious Nazis?

It's Sartre's genius as a novelist to bring these weighty philosophical questions to life in a breathtaking narrative peopled with passionate, complex, fully-realized characters. Before the pallid postmodern ennui of our own age fully set in, Sartre harkens us back to a time when ideas and principles mattered, when evil hadn't been rationalized out of existence and ambiguity dissolved truth into another species of lie, when one's philosophy could literally be a matter of life or death. Those times are gone, probably gone for good, but *Troubled Sleep* gives us an intoxicating taste of what it was like to really care about the Big Questions, even to acknowledge that there *are* Big Questions to answer.

All that aside *Troubled Sleep* is an exciting, engaging page-turner of men at war with each other--and with themselves. Along with *The Age of Reason* and *The Reprieve,* this novel completes one of the richest, most rewarding, and satisfying reading experiences I've had in recent memory.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Fall of France..., March 28, 2011

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John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Troubled Sleep: A Novel (Paperback)

This is the third book in Sartre's trilogy, "Roads to Freedom." The first two are entitled, in English, The Age of Reason: A Novel and The Reprieve: A Novel. I read the trilogy some 40 years ago, and felt they merited a re-read. And isn't it so much easier the second time around when you actually know, and in many cases have been, to the French towns named in the novel?

Sartre starts not in France, but in New York City, of all places. Gomez, once "Colonel" Gomez, of the Spanish Republican forces, has "washed up there"; now he is trying to make a living. He exhibits dollops of schadenfreude towards the French people, when he learns of the Nazi triumph, since he feels the French abandoned the Spanish Republicans, with an arms embargo, et al., in their hour of need. There is a touching scene when he commiserates with a Frenchman in a bar. The Frenchman says that he is the only person in the States who has done so. Meanwhile, Gomez's wife, Sarah, is fleeing Paris towards Nevers, with their small child, and their vehicle runs out of gas. She has more reason than most to flee since she is Jewish.

A few other characters from "The Reprieve" make "cameo appearances." Boris has been wounded, and is in Marsailles, still with Lola, the age of his mother. And his sister, and fellow Russian émigré, Ivich, is now unhappily married to George. Boris is contemplating fleeing to England and continuing the fight. Mathieu's brother, Jacques, and his wife, Odette are fleeing Paris, through the Haute-Alpes, towards Juan-Les-Pins. And Daniel, the pederast, makes an overture to Phillippe, the pacifist/soldier who is the son of a famed General.
But the vast majority of this novel occurs around the village of Padoux, in the Lorraine, eastern France. The French soldiers there know that the Germans have won the war, and are awaiting a formal declaration of the armistices. This has to be largely autobiographical, since it was in the village of Padoux that Sartre was taken prisoner, and removed to Germany. In the novel though, Sartre utilizes two possible alter-egos, Professor of Philosophy, Mathieu Delarue, and the dedicated communist, Brunet to fulfill two possible answers to man's fate in defeat. Mathieu, along with some other "second-line" troops, mainly clerks, elect to fight to the finish, literally seeking that Warholian 15 minutes of fame... the amount of time they may be able to hold up the German advance. (An older version of Kerry's question to Congress: "How do you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake?") But it is Brunet, who sees defeat as an opportunity, and as the French prisoners are being transferred to Germany, seeks to identify and work with fellow communists in order to achieve the "revolution." In the process, so many of the "eternal truths" of war are incorporated, from the officers who abandon their troops, to the latter's propensity to drink when "leaderless," to the lice, the reaction of French civilians to the "losers," and the non-coms who had "won" "The Great War."

Overall though, this novel lacked the complexity, punch and vigor of "The Reprieve." And so many characters were missing, that would have provided a kaleidoscope of emotions and feeling to the disaster, such as Gros-Louis, the illiterate shepherd, Charles Darrieux, a WWI casualty, Francois Hanniquin, the pharmacist from St. Flour, and many others. Brunet's approach tended to be too ideological and rigid, and may have been appropriately balanced against the others, but should not have dominated the novel.

I have an older copy published by Vintage (for $1.95), with one of the most marvelous covers ever, showing a crowd of French people, exhibiting perplexity, resignation, and sorrow in the face of this catastrophe. I'm glad to see the latest versions retain the same picture. I gave "The Reprieve" 6-stars, but for the sequel, alas, I can only muster four.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A basic fiction/philosophy book, December 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Troubled Sleep: A Novel (Paperback)

Well, since I'm the one person who read it, I suppose I'm talkin to meself, but I thought that this is one of the greatest books I've ever read. The main purpose of this book is to examine the minds of people with no short, medium, or long term plans (disposessed french soldiers) when facing confrontation with an alternate culture in which everything falls under a master plan (the Nazi invaders.) Lots of good commentary between the lines on topics such as human nature, art, sociology, and moderate international politics of the '40s. A very humbling book, if you're an egotist; a very profound book if you're a fatalist. I've passed it along to a few potheads, and they seem to think it's a very good book too.