I’m a sucker for well-crafted books, so when I saw a Franklin Library edition of Sartre’s short stories still in its original plastic wrap from 1981 at a second-hand store in Saskatoon, I knew it was coming home with me.

The five stories in this volume were originally published in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War. As you would expect with one of the paradigmatic existentialist philosophers, these stories are centred on questions of existence, meaning, and freedom.

Sarte’s fiction is filled with terse phenomenological description that illuminates the interior world of his characters. Consider, for example, the perspective of a condemned rebel during his last night in prison:

I felt relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn’t want to think any more about what would happen at dawn, at death. It made no sense. I only found words or emptiness. But as soon as I tried to think of anything else I saw rifle barrels pointed at me. (15).

Although the characters are fully realized, there’s nothing to love. Sartre’s fiction betrays an existential perspective void of the meaning given by tradition and virtue. This is on purpose, of course, but it doesn’t make it any less difficult to read.

If you’re looking to understand twentieth-century French existentialism, this will do more than teach you: you’ll feel the ethos. Whether it’s a journey you want to take is something you’ll have to use your radical freedom to determine.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Wall and Other Stories. Pennsylvania: Franklin Library, 1981.