Malraux: A Biography
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few lives in the twentieth century rival the sheer audacity and breadth of André Malraux — adventurer, novelist, art theorist, and France's legendary Minister of Cultural Affairs — and Axel Madsen's Malraux: A Biography chronicles this extraordinary existence with sweeping authority. From Malraux's early escapades in Indochina and his participation in the Spanish Civil War to his intimate alliance with Charles de Gaulle and his monumental contributions to French cultural life, Madsen reconstructs a life lived perpetually at the intersection of art, politics, and action. Madsen writes with the precision of a journalist and the narrative flair of a seasoned storyteller, presenting Malraux not merely as a biographical subject but as a symbol of the existentialist ideal — a man who fashioned meaning from chaos and transformed personal myth into historical reality. Drawing on meticulous research and rich contextual detail, Malraux: A Biography illuminates the contradictions that defined its subject: the fraudster who became a resistance hero, the colonialist critic who championed universal culture, the novelist who ultimately chose history over fiction. For anyone seeking to understand the turbulent spirit of twentieth-century France, this biography poses a question that lingers long after the final page: was Malraux the greatest self-invention of his age?
Author: Axel Madsen
Format: Hardback
Published: 1977, W. H. Allen, London (A Howard & Wyndham Company)
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few lives in the twentieth century rival the sheer audacity and breadth of André Malraux — adventurer, novelist, art theorist, and France's legendary Minister of Cultural Affairs — and Axel Madsen's Malraux: A Biography chronicles this extraordinary existence with sweeping authority. From Malraux's early escapades in Indochina and his participation in the Spanish Civil War to his intimate alliance with Charles de Gaulle and his monumental contributions to French cultural life, Madsen reconstructs a life lived perpetually at the intersection of art, politics, and action. Madsen writes with the precision of a journalist and the narrative flair of a seasoned storyteller, presenting Malraux not merely as a biographical subject but as a symbol of the existentialist ideal — a man who fashioned meaning from chaos and transformed personal myth into historical reality. Drawing on meticulous research and rich contextual detail, Malraux: A Biography illuminates the contradictions that defined its subject: the fraudster who became a resistance hero, the colonialist critic who championed universal culture, the novelist who ultimately chose history over fiction. For anyone seeking to understand the turbulent spirit of twentieth-century France, this biography poses a question that lingers long after the final page: was Malraux the greatest self-invention of his age?