VASSILIKOS, Vassilis. Z. Roman traduit du grec par Pierre Comberousse.
Paris: Gallimard, 1967.

Octavo (207 × 147 mm). (4) leaves, 342 pages, (1) leaf. Original wrappers and spine preserved.
Red half morocco, smooth spine, author and title gilt. Binding by Poupelin.

First edition, of the utmost rarity.
Jean-Paul Sartre’s personal copy, with a remarkable autograph inscription from the author: "à Jean Paul Sartre, / dont les "situations" traduit / en grec ainsi que "Z" sont / interdit et mis dans la prison / de la Sécurité Générale d'A- / thènes avec leurs lecteurs. / avec la foi d'un disciple. / Vassilis Vassilikos". ("To Jean-Paul Sartre, / whose Situations, translated / into Greek, and Z are / banned and imprisoned / in the Athens Security Police / along with their readers. / With the faith of a disciple. / Vassilis Vassilikos")

A major political novel of post-war European literature.
Inspired by the assassination of Greek MP Grigóris Lambrákis in 1963, Z exposes state violence, judicial manipulation and the suppression of civil liberties, at the very moment Greece was descending into the dictatorship of the Colonels. Immediately banned by the military junta, along with all of Vassilikos’s works, the novel became a powerful symbol of intellectual resistance.

The book was famously adapted for the cinema by Costa-Gavras in 1969, starring Yves Montand, Irene Papas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant, further cementing its international impact.

A superb association copy, uniting two central figures of twentieth-century political thought and literature, and of exceptional historical and symbolic significance.