Paul Nizan Paul - Yves Nizan ( ; 7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940 ) was a French philosopher and writer . He was born in Tours , Indre - et - Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean - Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV . He became a member of the French Communist Party , and much of his writing reflects his political beliefs , although he resigned from the party upon hearing of the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 . He died in the Battle of Dunkirk , fighting against the German army in World War II . His works include the novels " Antoine Bloye " ( 1933 ) , " Le Cheval de Troie " [ " The Trojan Horse " ] and " La Conspiration " [ " The Conspiracy " ] ( 1938 ) , as well as the essays " Les Chiens de garde " [ " The Watchdogs " ] ( 1932 ) and " Aden Arabie " ( 1931 ) , which introduced him to a new audience when it was republished in 1960 with a foreword by Sartre . In particular , the opening sentence " I was twenty , I won ' t let anyone say those are the best years of your life " ( " J ’ avais vingt ans . Je ne laisserai personne dire que c ’ est le plus bel âge de la vie . " ) became one of the most influential slogans of student protest during May ' 68 . Life Nizan was born to a middle - class family , his father having worked in rail prior to the First World War . Nizan ' s father ' s course through the bureaucracy of French industry would later form the basis of " Antoine Bloye " , and serve as a significant point of development for Nizan ' s understanding of social alienation . After finishing his studies , and after a trip to Algeria which Nizan would draw upon for his first novella , " Aden Arabie " , Nizan entered into a number of miscellaneous jobs around the Communist Party of France ( PCF ) , writing for its journal prominently and even , at one point , running a party bookshop in Paris . Nizan later took up a professorship teaching literature , during which time he took on a reputation among students as an affable and relaxed professor , sometimes even offering his students cigarettes during class . As a teacher , he was reticent about his own perspective on Marxist theory , instead encouraging his students to arrive independently at their own conclusions . Through this period , up to the onset of WWII , Nizan penned all of his major works , including " The Watchdogs " , an expose on materialist philosophy , and the novels " Antoine Bloye " and " The Conspiracy " . In 1939 , however , news of the non - aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union forced Nizan to abandon the French Communist Party . Given his active participation in the anti - fascist movement , as well as his commitment to the republican cause of the Spanish Civil War , Nizan could not accept the party ' s rapid shift against the popular front . Soon thereafter , Nizan enlisted to fight in the French army with the onset of World War II , and was killed in the opening phases of the Nazi occupation . Politics Nizan ' s politics took a number of sporadic turns throughout the course of his life , with Sartre noting that Nizan in his youth had vacillated between fascist and communist sympathies , attracted to both extremes of the political spectrum . Nizan also approached the priesthood as a young man , but soon turned away from that decision . Eventually , Nizan settled on membership in the Communist Party of France , under whose auspices Nizan ' s public life as an author began . Within the party , Nizan wrote extensively for official communist publications and had his works sold in party bookstores , although his most celebrated work today is his fiction . In his various novels , Nizan explores modern alienation , as well as the situation of the radical petit - bourgeois milieu caught between contending class forces . While Nizan was a loyal adherent to the policies of the PCF , his writings anticipate elements of postwar radical existentialism , leaving the contemporary reader with an ambiguous image of Nizan ' s political standing .