You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. This week we have a chapter

from a new LRB audiobook, becoming a philosopher from Spinoza to Sartre by Jonathan Ray. Read by the author,

it consists of 10 biographical essays first published in the LRB on some of the most influential thinkers

of the past 400 years, with an introductory conversation between me and Jonathan.

For today's episode of this podcast, we have Jonathan reading his chapter on Jean-Paul Sartre.

To buy the full audiobook, go to lrb.me forward slash audio,

or click on the link in the description.

You'll be able to listen to it in any of the major podcast apps.

If you use the code Pod20 at checkout, you'll get 20% off the cover price.

That's POD20 to get 20% off.

And on Friday on this podcast, you'll be able to hear a chapter from another new LRB audiobook,

Complicated Women by B. Wilson,

which will be on sale from then.

Pease in a Matchbox

A review of a new translation by Sarah Richmond of Being a Nothingness,

an essay in phenomenology and ontology by Jean-Paul Sartre.

At the turn of the 20th century, Gaston Gallimard was one of many suave young men about Paris,

with exquisite taste in literature, music and art.

Then he won the friendship not only of Marcel Proust, but also of André Gide, who, in 1908,

started the monthly Nouvelle Revue Francaise, in the hope of helping a rising generation

to escape the suffocating plushness of the writers of yesterday.

The distinctive dust jackets of the NRF, plain white with austere typography in black and red,

...