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TIME: Almanac 1993
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TIME Almanac 1993.iso
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30fate
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1992-09-25
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Man's Fate
(June 25, 1934)
Connoisseurs of Gallic wit will find little to please their
palates in Man's Fate by Andre Malraux. The one comic episode,
in which the conquering Ferral is made a fool of by his mistress
but counters in kind, has too bitter a taste for fun. The scenes
that will stick in a reader's memory are more sinister -- the
phonograph shop after it had been bombed, with the bloody
remains of the owner's wife and child; Ch'en's attempted murder;
the crowded lines of wounded Communists lying in the station,
waiting to be taken out and shot. Man's Fate is not a pleasant
book but few readers will soon forget their encounter with it.
The Author, at 32, already acknowledged as a front-rank
European writer, Son of a French civil servant, he went to
Indo-China at 20, made an archaeological expedition to Cambodia
and Siam, was not only an eyewitness of some of China's
bloodiest revolutionary years (1925-27) but an actor in them.
He was Commissioner of Propaganda for the revolutionary
government of the South; as a member of the Committee of Twelve
he helped direct the Canton insurrection, saw plenty of
hand-to-hand fighting. His story of the Shanghai rising is a
compressed and fictionalized account of what actually happened.
At present Author Malraux lives in Paris, working for the
publishing house of Gallimard.