12 Facts About Paul Nizan

Paul-Yves Nizan was a French philosopher and writer.

Paul Nizan was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycee Henri IV.

Paul Nizan became a member of the French Communist Party, and much of his writing reflects his political beliefs, although he resigned from the party soon after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.

Paul Nizan died in the Battle of Dunkirk, fighting against the German army in World War II.

Paul Nizan interrupted his studies at the Ecole Normale Superieure of the University of Paris in 1926 to leave for Aden where he worked as tutor to the son of French-born businessman-millionaire Antonin Besse.

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Paul Nizan drew upon his six-month experience in Aden to write his first novella, Aden Arabie, published in 1931.

Paul Nizan then entered into a number of miscellaneous jobs around the French Communist Party, writing for its journal prominently and even, at one point, running a party bookshop in Paris.

Paul Nizan later took up a professorship teaching literature, during which time he took on a reputation among students as an affable and relaxed professor, sometimes even offering his students cigarettes during class.

Paul Nizan's motive was not a moral judgment against the USSR; on the contrary, he criticized the French Communist Party for having lacked cynicism:.

Soon thereafter, Paul Nizan enlisted to fight in the French army with the onset of World War II, and was killed in action on 23 May 1940 at the Chateau de Cocove in Recques-sur-Hem, during the German offensive against Dunkirk.

Paul Nizan's politics took a number of sporadic turns throughout the course of his life, with Sartre noting that Paul Nizan in his youth had vacillated between fascist and communist sympathies, attracted to both extremes of the political spectrum.

Paul Nizan approached the priesthood as a young man but soon turned away from that decision.