Paris - Twenty years after his death, Jean-Paul Sartre has been raised to the status of "man of the century" by Bernard-Henri Levy, the philosopher-showman who led the revolt against left-wing thinkers in the 1970s.
His 650-page book, Le Siecle de Sartre, abounds with unsuspected enthusiasm for the guru of post-war existentialism, revealing a passion that Levy (51) admits to keeping secret for years. "What is a great intellectual? The talent, or rather the ambition, of Sartre?" he writes. "His appetite. His insatiable curiosity. His incorruptible intellectual side. Philosophy of course, but also literature, journalism, reporting, theatre, songs, lectures, broadcasts and cinema."
Elsewhere he writes: "Sartre is the only `intellectual' of his generation with a unique energy which will never be found again in anyone else."