The Age of Reason Author:Jean-Paul Sartre Paris in the agonizing years before the outbreak of the Second World War provides the bacground and setsthetoneof theisfamednove. A guilt-riddenintellectual; his pregnantmistress;theimpulsiveuniversity girlhe loves; an aging nightclubsinger and her young lover; a cruel andself-tormented homosexual; and a coldly implacable Communist logician- the... more »se characters play their parts in a taut drama that is both a dissection of a society in moral crisis and a piercing examiniation of the basic questions of human existence. It is brillant in its psychology truth, profound in its philosphic import. Above all,however, The Ageof Reason is awork ofthe most extraordinary artistry- in the words of critic Walter Allen, "A consummately planned novel."« less