Jean Paul Sartre was born on June 21 1905 in Paris. He went to Cours Hattemer a private school in France and then to Ecole Normale Superieure where he earned the equivalent of a BA and MA. He served in the French army in World War II and was captured by the Germans. He was held a prisoner of war for 9 months before being released.

Existentialist philosopher, playwright, and critic Jean-Paul Sartre is considered one of the most important French writers of the century. Though he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, he refused this and other accolades in protest of bourgeois capitalist society. Sartre, a nephew of humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, was a member of the Resistance during World War II and a member of the Communist Party until 1956, when the Soviets invaded Hungary.

Some of Sartre's best-known works include the play No Exit (1944), and the novels Nausea (1938) and The Age of Reason (1945). He also produced a number of philosophical treatises, including the acclaimed Being and Nothingness in 1943.