The Reprieve by Jean-Paul Sartre (Penguin Modern Classics)

It is September 1938 and during a heatwave Europe tensely awaits the outcome of the Munich conference, where they will learn if there is to be a war. In Paris people are waiting too, among them Mathieu, Jacques and Philippe, each wrestling with their own love affairs, doubts and angsts – and none of them ready to fight. The second volume in Sartre’s wartime Roads to Freedom trilogy, The Reprieve cuts between locations and characters to build an impressionistic collage of the hopes, fears and self-deception of an entire continent as it blinkers itself against the imminent threat of war.