Sartre refused the Nobel to preserve independence and protest Western bias

Evidence

Sartre did not let the attack stop his campaigning: he and Beauvoir continued to speak at demonstrations, write articles, and give evidence in support of those accused of terrorist activity. According to Claude Lanzmann, they would get up in the middle of the night to make desperate phone calls seeking reprieve for Algerians due to be executed. In 1964, Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize in Literature, saying that he did not want to compromise his independence and that he deplored the committee’s tendency to offer the prize only to Western writers or to anti-Communist émigrés, rather than to revolutionary writers from the developing world. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 876

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre and Beauvoir deliberately refused institutional honors to preserve their independence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 52; Sartre’s Nobel refusal was other-directed while Heidegger’s Berlin refusal was retreat — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 877; Sartre declined state honors during his life. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1147 (+1 more)