The Words

The Words  
Author(s) Jean-Paul Sartre
Original title Les Mots
Translator Bernard Frechtman
Country France
Language French
Genre(s) Autobiography
Publisher George Braziller
Publication date 1963
Published in
English
September 1964
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 255

The Words (French: Les Mots) is the title of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1963[1] autobiography.

Contents

Structure and Presentation

The text is divided into two near-equal parts entitled 'Reading' and 'Writing'. However, according to Philippe Lejeune, these two parts are only a façade and are not relevant to the chronological progression of the work. He considers the text to instead be divided into five parts which he calls 'acts':

The first title which Sartre thought of was Jean sans terre[2].

Reception

The book, consisting of Sartre distancing himself from writing and making his farewells to literature was very successful for the author and was hailed nearly unanimously as a "literary success". In November of the same year, 1964, he refused the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded for his work, described as "rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age."[3]

References

External links