3 Review(s)

Set in Malaya during the British protectorate, Sartres Typhus centres on the improbable couple formed by the disgraced former doctor Georges, who has sunk to the lowest depths of a highly stratified colonial society, and Nellie, a down-at-heel nightclub singer, whose partner succumbs to the typhus epidemic sweeping the country.Though it does not shy from the explosive issues of colonialism and race that are implicit in its setting, Typhus is both a turbulent love story in the best traditions of Western popular cinema and an existentialist tale of moral redemption that shares many fascinating parallels with Albert Camuss novel The Plague. Jean-Paul Sartre penned the screenplay Typhus in 1943 44 as a commission for French filmmakers Path, who were planning a postwar production. However, the film was never made, though Yves Allgrets 1953 film The Proud Ones retains some distant echoes of Sartres original script.The script was lost for nearly 60 years before being rediscovered and published in French in 2007.This first English translation will be essential for fans of Sartre and twentieth-century French literature and postwar film. Sartres lost screenplay is a tale of human redemption against a backdrop of utter hopelessness, a common theme in the work of the French existentialist. . . . Sartres existential philosophy is better known through his creative works than his philosophical treatises. e first English translation of this screenplay, written in 1943/44 and rediscovered in 2007, adds to that understanding. Library Journal