Jean Paul Sartre's novel L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason in English) (1945) is set against the background of the bohemian Paris of the late 1930s. The novel focuses around three days in the life of a philosophy teacher named Mathieu who is seeking to find the money to pay for an abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Sartre's novel seeks to illustrate the existentialist notion of ultimate freedom through presenting a detailed account of the characters' psychologies as they are forced to make significant decisions in their lives. It is the first part in the trilogy Les chemins de la liberté (The Roads to Freedom).

1945 novels | French novels | Philosophical novels