Aden Arabie

First edition. One of 50 copies on Rives vellum, ours one of 15 hors commerce copies numbered in Roman numerals, a deluxe issue following 7 copies on Japan paper.

A fine copy with full margins, presented in a chemise and slipcase of half brown shagreen, smooth spine, sides in wood-grain paper, the ensemble signed by P. Goy & C. Vilaine.

The volume includes a full-page map of the city and its surroundings.

The author’s first book, it opens with the now famous sentence: "J'avais vingt ans. Je ne laisserai personne dire que c'est le plus bel âge de la vie".

On the half-title, signed autograph inscription in red ink by Paul Nizan to his publisher Frédéric Rieder,

In 1926, Nizan, a young agrégé in philosophy, left the École Normale to take up a position as tutor in Aden (Yemen), hoping to escape what he considered the stifling atmosphere of the Parisian academic and intellectual milieu. In Aden, however, he found once again the Europe he had wished to leave behind, concentrated in a colonial society whose sclerosis and scandal he denounced.

Paul Nizan (1905-1940), who was killed in action during the German offensive against Dunkirk, had been a fellow student and friend of Sartre at the École Normale Supérieure.

After a long period of neglect, due both to Nizan’s break with the French Communist Party and to the ethical rigor and violence of the revolt his work embodies, the book was republished by Maspero in 1961 with a fine preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.

"Nizan demolished the myth of exoticism while at the same time giving to the journey East the ultimate justification of a return to oneself, a retreat in order to leap better." (Pascal Ory, in Nizan, destin d'un révolté, 1980).