The Condemned of Altona: A Play in Five Acts (Norton Library; N889) - Softcover

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393008894 ISBN 13: 9780393008890

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978

Synopsis

“The Condemned of Altona is a reminder that moral problems are real, irreducible and vital even when they are insoluble. It is, therefore, an event of first-rate importance. It is the work of one who is both a moral philosopher and a dramatist, of a writer who can present philosophical questions in the flesh and bones of concrete human situations.” ―Heinz Lubasz, The New Leader

The Condemned of Altona is an act of judgment on the twentieth century, which might have been an admirable era (the closing lines tell us) if man had not been threatened by ‘the cruel enemy who had sworn to destroy him, that hairless, evil, flesh-eating beast―man himself. ‘All the characters in the play are defendants, trapped inside the frame of the proscenium as securely as Eichmann within his glass cage in Jerusalem; their judge is the past, and its verdict is without mercy. Two death penalties are imposed, and one sentence of solitary confinement for life. The stage, as so often in M. Sartre’s hands, becomes a place of moral inquisition, at once a courtroom and a prison.

About this title

About the Author

Jean-Paul Sartre was a prolific philosopher, novelist, public intellectual, biographer, playwright and founder of the journal Les Temps Modernes. Born in Paris in 1905 and died in 1980, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964―and turned it down. His books include Nausea, Intimacy, The Flies, No Exit, Sartre’s War Diaries, Critique of Dialectical Reason, and the monumental treatise Being and Nothingness.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0393008894
• ISBN 13: 9780393008890
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184