Man's Fate

Man's Fate (French: La condition humaine, "The Human Condition") is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux. It was translated into English twice, both translations appearing in 1934, one by Haakon Chevalier under the title Man's Fate, published by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas in New York and republished by Random House as part of their Modern Library from 1936 on, and the other by Alastair MacDonald under the title Storm in Shanghai, published by Methuen in London and republished, still by Methuen, in 1948 as Man's Estate, to become a Penguin pocket in 1961. Currently the Chevalier translation is the only one still in regular print. The novel is about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution. Along with Les Conquérants (1928 – "The Conquerors") and La Voie Royale (1930 – "The Royal Way"), it forms a trilogy on revolution in Asia.


In 1958 Hannah Arendt published The Human Condition, one of her central theoretical works, whose English name is identical to the French title of Malraux's book; to avoid confusion, Arendt’s book was translated in French first as Condition de l’homme moderne (The Condition of the Modern Man), then as L'Humaine condition.