He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that 'a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.' His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre ( / ˈ s ɑːr t r ə/, US also / ˈ s ɑːr t/ French: 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of Existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, as well as a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre in Beijing, 1955
