Paul-Yves Nizan

Paul-Yves Nizan (French: [nizɑ̃]; 7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940) was a French philosopher and writer.

He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV. He became a member of the French Communist Party, and much of his writing reflects his political beliefs, although he resigned from the party upon hearing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. He died in the Battle of Dunkirk, fighting against the German army in World War II.

His works include the novels Antoine Bloye (1933), Le Cheval de Troie [The Trojan Horse] and La Conspiration [The Conspiracy] (1938), as well as the essays "Les Chiens de garde" ["The Watchdogs"] (1932) and "Aden Arabie" (1931), which introduced him to a new audience when it was republished in 1960 with a foreword by Sartre. In particular, the opening sentence "I was twenty, I won't let anyone say those are the best years of your life" (J’avais vingt ans. Je ne laisserai personne dire que c’est le plus bel âge de la vie.) became one of the most influential slogans of student protest during May '68.

Nizan was born to a middle-class family, his father having worked in rail prior to the First World War. Nizan's father's course through the bureaucracy of French industry would later form the basis of Antoine Bloye, and serve as a significant point of development for Nizan's understanding of social alienation.

He interrupted his studies at the École Normale in 1926 to leave for Aden where he worked as tutor to the son of French-born businessman-millionaire Antonin Besse. He drew upon his six-month experience in Aden to write his first novella, Aden Arabie, published in 1931. Nizan then entered into a number of miscellaneous jobs around the Communist Party of France (PCF), writing for its journal prominently and even, at one point, running a party bookshop in Paris. Nizan later took up a professorship teaching literature, during which time he took on a reputation among students as an affable and relaxed professor, sometimes even offering his students cigarettes during class. As a teacher, he was reticent about his own perspective on Marxist theory, instead encouraging his students to arrive independently at their own conclusions. Through this period, up to the onset of World War II, Nizan penned all of his major works, including "The Watchdogs", an expose on materialist philosophy, and the novels Antoine Bloye and The Conspiracy.

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