Brown reviews the English translation of No Exit, discussing Sartre's portrayal of Hell and how it compares to modern perceptions and those presented in classic literature.

As if the contemporary world were not reason enough, there is also No Exit, a new play by Jean-Paul Sartre, to make hell highly topical as a subject just now. M. Sartre's hell is quite a different place either from the hell to which life of recent years has exposed people everywhere, or that to which literature and the drama have accustomed us.

Tantalus, old and withered, standing in a pool up to his chin, and in his terrible thirst lapping at the water which disappears eternally just as he is about to moisten his parched lips. Sisyphus, his body arched everlastingly against a rock which he must push up a hill, only to find at the crest that it rolls...