Nada

This tour de force political thriller, told in Manchette's signature noir style, follows a group of far left extremists in the throes of post-1968 disillusionment.

The thrill of 1968 is long over, and the heavy fog of the 1970s has settled in. In Paris, however, the Nada gang—or groupuscule—still retains a militant attachment to its revolutionary dreams. Bringing together an anarchist orphaned by the Spanish Civil War, a Communist veteran of the French resistance, a frustrated high-school teacher of philosophy, a timid office worker, a terminal alcoholic, and one uncompromising young woman with a house in the country, Nada sets out to kidnap the American ambassador and issue a call to arms.
 
What could possibly go wrong?

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942–1995) was a crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. In 1971 he published his first novel and went on to establish a new genre of French novel, the neo-polar. NYRB Classics publishes his Fatale,The Mad and the Bad, and Ivory Pearl. 
 
Donald Nicholson-Smith has translated Manchette’s Fatale, The Mad and the Bad, and Ivory Pearl, as well as Jean-Paul Clebert’s Paris Vagabond for NYRB Classics, and Yvan Alagbe’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures and Nicole Claveloux’s The Green Hand and Other Stories for NYR Comics. He lives in New York City.

Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, and, most recently The Other Paris. He translated Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines and has written introductions to several other NYRB Classics, including Classic Crimes by William Roug­head and Pedigree by Georges Simenon. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.