No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization

by Yoav Di-Capua

It is a curious and relatively little-known fact that for two decades—from the end of World War II until the late 1960s—existentialism’s most fertile ground outside of Europe was in the Middle East, and Jean-Paul Sartre was the Arab intelligentsia’s uncontested champion. In the Arab world, neither before nor since has another Western intellectual been so widely translated, debated, and celebrated.
 
By closely following the remarkable career of Arab existentialism, Yoav Di-Capua reconstructs the cosmopolitan milieu of the generation that tried to articulate a political and philosophical vision for an egalitarian postcolonial world. He tells this story by touring a fascinating selection of Arabic and Hebrew archives, including unpublished diaries and interviews. Tragically, the warm and hopeful relationships forged between Arab intellectuals, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and others ended when, on the eve of the 1967 war, Sartre failed to embrace the Palestinian cause. Today, when the prospect of global ethical engagement seems to be slipping ever farther out of reach, No Exit provides a timely, humanistic account of the intellectual hopes, struggles, and victories that shaped the Arab experience of decolonization and a delightfully wide-ranging excavation of existentialism’s non-Western history.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

Published March 30, 2018

Reviews

[Greg Florez · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely informative historical account of Sartre and Arab Existentialism, the particular tensions within 20th century political and intellectual movements in the Arab world and between Arab political movements and European intellectuals. Perhaps lacking in any in-depth discussion about the philosophical basis of the failure of Sartre to fulfil his promise of a universal ethics of action.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

No Exit is the backbone of my thesis on Arab existentialism and the revolution in Egypt; I am forever indebted to Di-Capua. In the span of time that it took me to complete my thesis, I have probably read this book ten times. If you are interested in Sartre's betrayal, existentialist philosophers of the Arab world or you are just an innocent bystander... read this.

[Goodwill · Rating 1 out of 5]

There’s an attempt at story-making but the author has not delved enough into the Arabic sources and the story is tilted toward the Hebrew sources and the Zionist perspective. More scholarship in English is needed on Sartre and Palestine and this book could be useful as an example of what-not-to-do

[Yasmine Flodin-Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intellectual history with soul, lovely book. And a very sophisticated nuanced look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.