Entrambi scritti nell'immediato dopoguerra, Morti senza tomba e Le mani sporche rappresentano una felice sintesi di tutto il pensiero filosofico di libertà, scelta, responsabilità sociale. Il primo è ispirato alla Resistenza francese; un gruppo di partigiani attende di essere torturato, l'orgoglio di una volontà libera e fiera consentirà loro di resistere fino a quando il diritto alla vita non s'imporrà come unica, fondamentale verità. Le mani sporche, rappresentato per la prima volta nel 1948 e in seguito ritirato dall'autore per le clamorose polemiche suscitate, è il dramma di un giovane intellettuale e del suo intimo contrasto tra la rigorosa aderenza a una scelta ideologica e i compromessi imposti dalle necessità politiche contingenti.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution." Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.