Man's Fate

The dapper fellow above is one Andre Malraux, born this day 1901 in Paris, France. M. Malraux had a rough beginning to life, his parents divorced when he was four, and his father then committed suicide when Malraux was twenty-nine. He was afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome as a child and suffered vocal, and facial tics. At the age of 21, he left France for Cambodia where his interaction with the French colonial government quickly turned him into a very vocal critic of French colonial policy. Moving back to France, he wrote the book for which I make him the hero of the day. Man's Fate, published in 1933, which concerned four revolutionaries in Shanghai, China in the late 1920's. The books focuses on four main characters, and how each of them meet their fate's. One character, Baron de Clappique is probably my favourite. Happy, and cheerful on the outside, but suffering inwardly, he is a compulsive gambler that refers to gambling as "suicide without dying." The book won the Prix Goncourt in 1933, and is considered a classical of French literature. Malraux went on to fight against the fascists in Spain, and eventually became the Minister of Information under Charles de Gaulle, and later France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs. All of those are great achievements, but it is for that one book, and the following quote that M. Malraux is my hero he once said "There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman." Pretty good quote that, and so for that quote, and one hell of a good book, Andre Malraux (November 3rd, 1901- November 23rd, 1976, at the age of 75), you are my hero of the day.