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598 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
� God does not exist.
� God exists and is a bastard.
� God exists, but falls asleep from time to time: his nightmares are our existence.
� God exists, but has fits of madness: these fits are our existence.
Sometimes they are relatively young men, individuals thirty or forty years old. And � a curious thing, worth pondering � the younger they are the more pathetic and helpless they seem. For what can be more frightful than the sight of a youngster sitting brooding on a bench in a public square, overwhelmed by his thoughts, silent and estranged from the world round about him? Sometimes the man or the youngster is a sailor; at other times he is perhaps an emigré who would like to return to his country and is unable to; many times they are beings who have been abandoned by the woman they love; others, beings who are out of step with life, or who have left home forever, or are brooding about their loneliness and their future. Or it may be a youngster like Martín himself, who is beginning to realize, to his horror, that the absolute does not exist.