Modern Times: selected non-fiction, by Jean-Paul Sartre, trans Robin Buss (Penguin, £7.99 in UK)

Sartre the novelist and playwright is in eclipse, it seems, but Sartre the thinker, political activist, controversialist and cultural guru still provokes widespread interest and debate. This collection, edited by Geoffrey Wall, takes in a wide range of quasi-philosophical essays, literary criticism, political and polemical writings, cultural think-pieces, and even travel writing of a special kind. Among his various facets, Sartre was a great journalist who had the knack of being where the action was and of being first in the field in a direct, challenging way. Politically and intellectually he was rather a weathercock, but that in some ways makes him more interesting than writers like Aragon who remained hard-line Communists to the end; and at least he never recoiled into being a reactionary. The translations read smoothly.