The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV (book review)

The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV is a publication whose usefulness within Sartre Studies is probably comparable to that of Les Chemins de la liberte´ within Sartre’s own corpus. That is to say that the selection of texts that Craig Vasey brings together in this translated volume are designed to situate the beginnings of a final part of Sartre’s major novelistic project within the framework of the whole, both the series of novels and the larger corpus. And this is what, if anything, Les Chemins de la liberte´ offer Sartre’s readers: the novels trace the development of Sartrean thought as it plays out over time and within its specific historical setting. As Vasey’s edition displays, these novels mark a movement to a point in time and in Sartre’s thinking when the novel can no longer articulate the increasingly politically committed philosophy of Existentialism. For this, both the angle of attack and the astute choice of essays by Michel Contat, which he compiles and translates, Vasey is to be congratulated: this is a solid scholarly achievement.