It is September 1938 and during a heatwave, Europe tensely awaits the outcome of the Munich conference, where they will learn if there is to be a war. In Paris, people are waiting too, among them Mathieu, Jacques and Philippe, each wrestling with their own love affairs, doubts and angsts - and none of them ready to fight. The second volume in Sartre´s wartime Roads to Freedom trilogy, The Reprieve cuts between locations and characters to build an impressionistic collage of the hopes, fears and self-deception of an entire continent as it blinkers itself against the imminent threat of war.