Identify this novel?

Cafe Society
1

This one should be easy for the SDMB!

I read it about 2 years ago. It was one of those strolling through the public library looking for old Modern Library editions to read (I like the paper they used to use), found it, checked it out, read it, really enjoyed it, promptly forgot author & title.

Here’s what I remember about it:

Set in Paris, early 20th century. The author was definitely French, so I assume I read it in translation.

The protagonist has a lover who becomes pregnant, he urges her to have an abortion because he is morally opposed to marriage. He is either a communist or a socialist, and is in love with a student (not the woman who is pregnant). I think he is a professor and she is one of his students.

I think the novel may have been part of a series of semi-autobiographical novels by this author, and I also believe it was written around the time it was set - early 20th century. The copy I read was at least 30 years old.

I’d like to read more by this author if you can tell me who he is.

2

It sounds like “The Age of Reason” by Jean Paul Sarte. Not positive but pretty sure based on your description. Its a good book but my favorite by Sarte is “Nausea”, which is a little more heavy handed but equally enjoyable.

3

OFBT’s right. It’s Sartre’s The Age of Reason, the first book of a trilogy. That book is way too heavy-handed and didactic for my taste. Nausea, on the other hand, is probably the only truly great book he ever wrote–a highly original and utterly bizarre fictional journal of solipsism and psychosis. His auto-bio, The Words, is worth checking out too.

4

Thanks! Yes, it was certainly The Age of Reason. Will get more Sartre from the library!

5

And now, of course, I feel very embarrassed that I couldn’t remember Sartre, for God’s sake!