Age of Assassins

Le Temps des assassins (1945), translated as Age of Assassins, is a memoir by French writer Philippe Soupault. It details his six-month imprisonment by the Vichy government in Tunis, Tunisia, where he worked as a journalist and director of Radio Tunis.1

The term "assassin" itself has a historical origin tied to the Nizari Ismailis, a breakaway group from Shia Islam that occupied mountain fortresses in Syria and Iran from the late 11th to the mid-13th century. They were known for their use of espionage and targeted killings of enemy leaders, which led to the word "assassin" entering European languages to mean a murderer, often for political or monetary reasons.2