Andre Malraux: Man's Fate, Man's Hope

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Driven to extremes by his unbridled energies, Andre Malraux (1901-1976)--revolutionary turned aristocrat turned man of the world--was a Communist fellow traveler, a radical journalist in Saigon at the onset of the nationalist revolt, and leader of an air squadron in the Spanish Civil War. Though the French Resistance fighter and novelist was a hero to the left of the 1930s and '40s, he was ``really a kind of liberal who had a lifelong horror of bloodshed, terrorism and war,'' writes Murphy. As minister in two De Gaulle cabinets, this ``liar'' who largely fabricated his memoirs ``kidded himself that he was . . . the left half that made De Gaulle's regime whole.'' Former staff member of the Economist , Murphy restores Malraux's relevance for our time, portraying him as a contradictory personality who lived out the fears and hopes of our century and survived to tell the truth. This towering, vibrant biography is as kinetic and thought-provoking as its many-faceted subject. Photos. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Though his reputation has grown thin, novelist/political activist/art historian Malraux was at the center of French literary and political life for a good part of our century. Man's Fate , his sprawling epic novel of political turmoil in China during the struggle between Communism and Chiang Kai-shek, retains its power, though Malraux's leftist sympathies seem archaic. And his multivolume history of art still makes illuminating reading, though current fashions might call some of his observations politically incorrect. Murphy's exhaustive, often exhausting, biography is first-rate, defining a most engaged and enigmatic man who meditated on the human condition while he was actively involved in making history.-- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.