The Spanish Civil War is still being fought, but it's an isolated conflict; the threat of war in the rest of Europe looms larger now after the Austrian Anschluß, but does not feel immediate yet. In other words, as humans we exist first, but then we do things that define who we are as individuals. His presence continues throughout the Roads to Freedom trilogy, but he’s never more present than in the opening novel. He suggests the pair catch up to discuss the situation further, with a deflated Delarue agreeing to this.

This is a book that was written modestly but with absolute confidence in the message it was putting across, and it’s a book I definitely won’t be forgetting any time soon. Fiction and philosophy inextricably and ‘entertainingly’ combined almost rendering it a page-turner. Daniel suggests the pair head off for a drink, but even young Boris has picked up on the archangel’s dangerous air. It’s an extensive discussion they have that sees much toing and froing of minds, but Delarue is clearly wise to Daniel’s behaviour and rejects his proposal. Not that the subsequent books lack this, but the Reprieve’s focus on simultaneity and Iron in the Soul’s immersion into total war ensure the Age of Reason maintains a humane and innocent edge as it is set prior to the world’s descent into madness.The Marcelle situation resolves itself in a manner that largely absolves Mathieu from any sort of responsibility (though that resolution comes with one big surprise, as one of the characters makes another revelation that upends things quite a bit, too -- and suggests that maybe Marcelle's best interests are not best served by this particular outcome). You can’t help but believe Sartre developed the likes of Daniel, Boris, and Ivich from people he knew, and they’re so magnificently observed as individuals it’s as if they really were living and breathing in the 1930s.

you condemn capitalist society, and yet you are an official in that society; you display an abstract sympathy with Communists, but you take care not to commit yourself, you have never voted. Sartre’s sharp and restless probing into the nature of freedom beguiles and infuriates at every turn yet ‘The Age of Reason’ remains compulsively readable.I may not agree with all that Sartre says but I still find synchronization with his efforts at deciphering the question of ‘being human’.

He first tries his wealthy friend Sarah, although bumps into the communist Brunet in the process (who later invites Mathieu to join the party, but he declines).

By now, even the reader is getting a bit exasperated by Delarue’s behaviour, is he a coward or a pretentious buffoon? The thought of manipulating his ‘friend’ amuses the cynical Daniel (‘When Mathieu adopted a Quakerish attitude, Daniel hated him’, p. I admit, it is good way to show how people around Europe felt at that time, but even if I forget the plot, even ideas are very difficult to follow in this style.

Mathieu does so partly to impress Ivich and when he is there, in the darkness of the death room, comes across the bundles of thousands of Francs which Lola has been saving for years. Boris, meanwhile, is having an affair with Lola Montero, the ageing (well, 40 makes her ageing in this book) nightclub singer. This is just one of hundreds and hundreds of vividly described moments of revulsion, nausea, disgust and loathing which saturate the text.Either way, the dozen or so ‘freedom’ sections feel like plasters strapped onto the groaning seething mass of disgust, appalled descriptions of physical functions and an apparently never-ending series of ways for the characters to feel disgusted and revolted by each other.