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Translator’s Note

In The Conspiracy, Nizan draws on cultural, political and historical sources that will often be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers, half a century after its original publication. A few explanatory notes have, therefore, been provided at the end of the book, to which readers may if they wish refer – but without burdening the text of the novel itself with any inappropriate apparatus of reference numbers.

Perhaps the most important thing to explain is something about the French system of higher education, in which a particular role is played by a group of elite Grandes Écoles in Paris, most of which go back in their present (approximate) form to the Revolutionary or Napoleonic period, and which flank the University of Paris (Sorbonne). Rosenthal and his friends attend what is still the best known of these, the Ecole normale supérieure in Rue d’Ulm. This is entered by annual competition, open to pupils from lycées (roughly equivalent to grammar or high schools) all over France. However, certain well-known Parisian lycées like the Louis-le-Grand of this book (which the author himself attended with Jean-Paul Sartre in the early twenties, and which stands next door to the Sorbonne) specialize in preparing for the Ecole Normale Supérieure entrance: pupils from less prominent lycées throughout the country transfer there at the age of eighteen for this purpose. At the Ecole Normale Supérieure, students are prepared not simply for a first degree (licence), but also for the more difficult agrégation, a competitive examination which qualifies successful candidates to apply for a strictly limited number of teaching posts (in history, mathematics, philosophy, etc.) in lycées – posts which carry higher salaries than those open to teachers who only have ordinary degrees.

Other Grandes Écoles figuring here include the Ecole Nationale des Chartes, for archivists and librarians; the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques (now the Institut d’Etudes Politiques) in Rue Saint-Guillaume; the Ecole Polytechnique (familiarly known as X), which has a military status and qualifies pupils either for technical branches of the armed services or for engineering branches of the public services, through an education specializing in mathematics and the physical sciences; and, in the domain of technical and vocational education, the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

The Conspiracy is set in the political context of France between 1924 and 1929. In 1924, the Right-dominated Horizon-Blue Chamber (so called after the colour of the French Army’s field uniform between 1915 and 1927) was replaced in general elections which led to a coalition government of the Left Cartel. Poincaré, the conservative politician most identified with France’s hard line towards defeated Germany and in particular with French occupation of the Ruhr (1923), was replaced as Premier by the Radical-Socialist Herriot, while Millerand was similarly replaced as President by Doumergue. By 1925, however, the Right held governmental power once more, with a series of ministries headed for the most part either by Briand (1925–26 and again in 1929) or Poincaré (1926–29).

I should like to express my gratitude to Christine Donougher, Marie-Thérèse Weal, and especially Madame Rirette Nizan, for their kind help when I was finalizing this translation.