Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine)

I read the "Shanghai station" before and found this book mentioned in the appendix. This is a much better story. Tells very realistic the pre-revolutionary struggle in Shanghai, the conditions under which the local population lives. The state of Shanghai with it's international, foreign, colonial part. The desparation of the people. This book is very fascinating, however paints a somehow somber, depressing picture.

André Malraux, who was a leftist in his youth, resisted the Nazis during WWII, and became minister of culture under DeGaulle, was a man that defied easy definitions. His novel "Man's Fate" resists easy classifications. This is a political thriller based on true events: a failed Communist uprising in China at the time of the uneasy alliance of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces and the Communists. For reasons of grand strategy, the decision-makers in Moscow opt for sacrificing their people to Chiang, betraying the very cadres who will die for the cause Moscow pushes. This is the main, but not the only, irony in the novel. There is an assassin who kills because that is the only moment when he truly feels alive (Ch'en). There is a man of mixed European and Japanese ancestry (Kyoshi) who fights for Communism because he believes it is the only answer to the desperate situation of the Chinese workers and peasants, the same Chinese workers and peasants that the rich Chinese have exploited with the help of Europeans, and that the Japanese will kill wholesale in the 1930's and WWII during their war against China. There is a professional communist agitator (Katov) who will behave like a hero when the time comes, but since now we know what the men and women of the Komintern did, it is clear that Katov was familiarized with torture and murder from the torturer and murderer's perspective.The author's sympathies are with the Communists, but he is too honest not to write clearly that the "heroes" of this book could very well be seen as criminals and terrorists by the other side. "Man's Fate" is an engrossing novel. It reads fast and shows a very human aspect of a doomed revolution where betrayal is the name of the game and expediency the only applicable rule. Thus, the sacrifices that some of the main characters must endure, including torture and death, are reduced to simple convenience or inconvenience for their leaders, who will sacrifice them without a second thought. A final irony that Malraux could not have foreseen when he published the novel in 1933, is that the defeated ones at the end of the book are the Communists, who will go on to win the big price itself, China, in 1949. The winners of the uprising in the novel are the Nationalists of the Kuomintang, who will end up losing China to the Communists and setting up their government-in-exile in Taiwan, under Chiang Kai-shek's leadership. And today, 70 years after "Man's Fate" was published, Taiwan is a new democracy, an industrial and technological powerhouse, while China is still led by a clique of Communists who answer to nobody and who will kill their own people in order to gain an advantage and stay in power, just like they did in the uprising that the novel describes, just like they did --by the millions-- during Mao's reign, and just like they continue to do to this day. If there is something such as man's fate, it is definitely ironic.

This is a reference among Malraux's writings, because it describes perfectly his own obsessions. Malraux has traveled a lot, and has experienced a lot of different concepts, and a lot of different situations.He started by exporting stolen antiques in Thailand, and spent some time in prison there. He was a convinced communist, and went to several countries, where revolution were occuring in the 50s. He finally became a ministry of Charles de Gaulles, who is the symbol of liberal people in France. His ashes were recently transfered to the Pantheon by Jacques Chirac, as an acknowledge to his work, as a writer, and as a politician.Malraux loved to build his books around historical situations, where it appeared clearly they were made by individual contributions.This also might be one of Malraux's obsessions. Where does the individual stands in a nation. What importance should be given to the collective organism when it has to be opposed to the interests of a particular individual ?During his life, Malraux seems to have explored all the range of possibilities, moving from a concept to another. La Condition humaine really shows all the ambiguity of this duality Collective/Individual.Some characters are folded up on themselves, and might represent the extreme individuality, some other die for the good of an idea, and might represent the collectivity. But at the end of the book, no one has achieved to find the Answer.If you would like to learn about the French culture, I would highly recommend this book, for three reasons. First Malraux did a lot of interesting things at the end of the 60's, as a ministry of culture, and so impacted the current French culture. Second, the duality between collective / individual is something that perfectly describes France itself, and is the heart of the current situation of this country. And third, the book itself is really well written, and a pleasure to read.

Being a French student, I have been able to read the French text. Hence, I find it quite difficult to comment the style, since "tradutore traditore". However, I would like to insist on the philosophical content of the book. Of course, it still remains plain litterature and therefore cannot be compared to a full philosophical work. Malraux reaches the deepest essence in the XXth century : every character is fleeing his own existence, indulging in drug addiction and contemplation, or in political action. Who really overcomes his condition ? Can it be said ok Kyo : this is doubtful. The absurd dimension in the book must not neglected : the pitiful diplomatic negociation of Ferrat close the book, while the old Gisors engulfes in the blackest of nights, the same one that Tchen, in the very first pages, had vainly tempted to overcome. It is of course, the vnity of human engagements that appears, which already evokes Malraux's elvolution.