Chaos and Night is concerned with a relic of the war, a Spanish anarchist, now sixty-seven, who has been exiled in Paris for twenty years. The old anecdote tells us that, when a Frenchman was asked by his grandchild what he had done during the Revolution, he replied, "I survived." In effect, Montherlant examines this answer for his hero: to find out what survived and why and whether it was worth the effort. (p. 20)

Two themes run through this austere but rich novel, one explicit, one manifested through the book's shape and sum: the realities of political belief, and God's last laugh. As for the former, it becomes increasingly clear to Celestino that seemingly immutable principles are a matter of the moment in which they are acquired; they depend on environmental conditions, one's desires, one's very metabolism…. Unknown to Celestino and clear to us only at the end...