André Malraux wrote about men and places. The men were larger than life and the places distant. Women scarcely figured in his books, and when they did they functioned as backdrops which reflected and glorified their men….

[For] Malraux, the novelist and the man, political controversies have always provided the pretext to confront larger, more metaphysical problems. The French title for Man's Fate is La Condition humaine, and this phrase, gleaned from Pascal, bespeaks a concern with broader issues than what political group would take over China. This novel's real theme is alienation; which Malraux highlights by having each character, no matter what his nationality, somehow bifurcated…. Like most novels that purport to be "philosophical" in nature, the political ramifications, if any, are profoundly conservative. At the end of Man's Fate the political situation has altered for the worse, but that is a detail. What has not changed...