This story begins in the Paris of the 1930s, when artists and writers stood at the centre of the world stage. In the decade that saw the rise of the Nazis, much of the thinking world sought guidance from this group of intellectuals. Herbert Lottman's chronicle follows the influential players - Gide, Malraux, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Koestler, Camus - and their pro-Fascist counterparts, through the German occupation, Liberation, and into the Cold War, when the struggle between superpowers all but drowned out their voices.