Nearly a hundred years later André Malraux wrote of a time of political chaos in _Man’s Fate_. But the span of his novel was four months rather than thirty years. Malraux gives a detailed account of Chiang Kai-shek’s military victory of 1927 in Shanghai and his subsequent crushing of the Chinese Communist forces which fought him. Not only does he examine the roles of the immediate participants--the White Guards, the governmental army, the “Reds” and “Blues” of the Kuomintang--but also the intervention of outside forces as well--the Russian Communists, the Shanghai bankers, the French Chamber of Commerce, and the Franco-Asiatic Consortium. Malraux explores both the military and economic aspects of the struggle. Kyo Gisors feels that triumph here will mean “the U.S.S.R. increased to six hundred million men.” Ferral, head of the Chamber and the Consortium, realizes that it will also mean the end of his group’s commercial penetration of the Yangtze basin. _Man’s Fate_ may be read for these insights into the uprising of 1927 and also for background on the formulation of the Communist decision which kept the armies of Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, and others within the Kuomintang until they gained enough strength to defeat it. =Jean-Paul Sartre: The Shadow of Munich= Jean-Paul Sartre’s technique in _The Reprieve_ (1947) may remind one of a photographer whose camera mechanism has gone awry. What he is trying to do is clear, but it does not quite come off. Covering the week of September 23-30, 1938, the novel is kaleidoscopic. Using more than nine distinct couples or groups, Sartre jumps from the activities of one to another with no transition. The scene may change from sentence to sentence or even within a sentence. He obviously does this to portray events which are happening simultaneously. He also uses this technique, apparently, to give some sense of the chaos that reigned during the week when Europe was on the verge of war. To show the impact of these events upon France, he has selected his people from many strata of French society. Interspersed between all these semi-fragmented stories and incidents are dialogues between the politicians: Hitler and his aides, Daladier and Bonnet, Chamberlain and Halifax, Sir Nevile Henderson and Sir Horace Wilson. Through its characters the novel ranges over Europe from England to the Sudetenland, finally arriving at Munich. The book’s last two paragraphs serve as an example of this technique which has a cumulative effect but which can be extremely troublesome to a reader accustomed to conventional narration. Daladier’s plane lands at Le Bourget as Milan Hlinka, a loyal Sudeten Czech, hears of his country’s dismemberment: