Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a French philosopher, novelist and playwright, born and died in Paris, and the leading figure of existentialism. His main philosophical work is Being and Nothingness (1943), and his fiction includes the novel Nausea and the short story collection Le Mur (1939). Sartre's best-known play is No Exit (Huis clos), and his fiction also includes the trilogy The Roads to Freedom. In 1945 he founded the review Les Temps modernes and became its editor. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 and declined it. Simone de Beauvoir was his lifelong companion.