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The Roads to Freedom is a series of novels by French author Jean Paul Sartre. Intended as a tetralogy, it was left incomplete, with only three complete volumes and part one of the fourth volume of the planned four volumes published in his lifetime and the unfinished second part of the fourth volume was edited and published a year after his death. The three published novels revolve around Mathieu, a socialist teacher of philosophy, and a group of his friends. The trilogy includes: L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason), Le sursis (which is generally translated as The Reprieve but could cover a number of semantic fields from 'deferment' to 'amnesty'), and La mort dans l'âme (Troubled Sleep, originally translated by Gerard Hopkins as Iron in the Soul, Hamish Hamilton, 1950). The trilogy was to be followed by a fourth novel, La dernière chance (i. e. The Last Chance); however, Sartre would never finish it: two chapters were published in 1949 in Sartre's magazine Les Temps modernes under the title Drôle d'amitié. The last part of The Last Chance was later reconstructed and published in 1981 (see section below). The novels were written largely in response to the events of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, and express certain significant shifts in Sartre's philosophical position towards 'engagement' (commitment) in both life and literature, finding their resolution in the extended essay L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Form of Humanism).

In April 1938, Sartre's first novel Nausea was published. Three months later, in July, he wrote to Simone de Beauvoir: "I have all at once found the subject of my [next] novel, its proportions and its title The subject is freedom." Originally it was to be titled "Lucifer", and written in two parts – "La Revolte" and "Le Serment" (The Oath). In the autumn of 1938, Sartre began writing the novel that was to become The Age of Reason, and continued working on the novel on and off for the next year. In early September 1939, he was called up into the French Army and was assigned to the meteorological unit. Except for some regular meteorological observations, this war work was not exacting, and he had plenty of time to work on his novel, his war diaries, and numerous letters to friends. At one point he produced seventy three pages of the novel in thirteen days. He had completed the novel by December 31, 1939, and immediately started a sequel, which he originally wanted to call September (referring to the Munich Agreement of September 1938), and which became titled The Reprieve. He finished writing The Reprieve in November 1943. However, he was constantly editing the manuscripts, and also turned them over to Simone de Beauvoir for critique. His writing in these novels was semi autobiographical. His separation from his accustomed life in Paris and the leisure and structure of his war work led him to continued introspection during this period. Mathieu was based upon himself, Ivich was based on Olga Kosakiewicz (a student of Simone de Beauvoir and friend of Sartre), Gomez was based on Fernando Gerassi, Sarah on Stephania Avdykovych (both very close friends of Sartre and de Beauvoir), and Boris was based on Sartre's friend Jacques Laurent Bost. Marcelle, perhaps loosely based on Simone de Beauvoir, was the character most removed from the real life model. The Age of Reason and The Reprieve were published together after the war in September 1945. "Sartre was by now France's leading intellectual voice, and the novels, not least because they defined a critical period in French history, were received with great enthusiasm by the French public." However, some reviews were mixed. Louis Parrot writing for Les Lettres francaises said, "Jean Paul Sartre has definitely taken his place among the greatest French writers of our day His powerful talent has affirmed itself with rare brilliance." Gaéton Picon writing for Confluences said, "If Sartre's ambition was to force the doors of literary history, he has succeeded Like all great novelists, he also enjoys the privilege of having a universe of his own." However, Louis Beirnart, writing for Etudes, said, "If books could smell, one would have to hold one's nose in front of Sartre's latest books Sartre's objective is, very clearly, to show life through its excrement and lower the value of existence to the level of the gutter and the dump." Orville Prescott, writing for The New York Times, mentioned "His Cast of Characters Dull". Extracts of the third novel in the trilogy, Iron in the Soul (or Troubled Sleep), appeared in the journal Les Temps Modernes in January and June 1949, and it was published in book form later that year. The reviews were not good. As for the reception, Sartre scholar Michel Contat says: Troubled Sleep "failed to provoke the anticipated and promised positive responses, as critics transferred their moral disappointment into an accusation that [Troubled Sleep] represented an exhaustion of Sartre's literary creativity. Although Sartre always said that he accorded no importance to the judgments of literary reviewers, his partial failure in their eyes intimidated him in the face of the fourth volume " Consequently, Sartre was unable to complete the series.

"The first novel, L'âge de raison (1945; The Age of Reason), centers on philosophy student Mathieu Delarue's uncertainty over whether to devote himself to his pregnant mistress or to his political party. The second volume, Le sursis (1945, The Reprieve), explores the ramifications of the appeasement pact that Great Britain and France signed with Nazi Germany in 1938. In the third book, La mort dans l'âme (1949; Troubled Sleep, published in Great Britain as Iron in the Soul), Delarue ends his indecisiveness by attempting to defend a village under attack from the Germans. Although he is apparently killed, Delarue expresses his ultimate freedom through his bravery." The second part of Troubled Sleep focuses on Mathieu's communist friend Brunet in the POW camp. Drôle d'amitié (Strange Friendship) also focuses on Brunet, and his fellow prisoner Schneider, in the POW camp. In the final part, La dernière chance (The Last Chance), it is revealed that Mathieu was in fact not previously killed: he reappears in a stalag after two months in the hospital.

In 1981 a text of La dernière chance was published in French with Sartre's complete works of fiction in the Pléiade edition. George H. Bauer and Michel Contat had painstakingly reconstructed the intended novel from Sartre's "completely unorganized manuscript pages." In their "Critical Note on The Last Chance," the authors note: "Let us also add that Sartre had come to be aware of the work we were doing on his drafts, and that he allowed it." In 2009, Craig Vasey translated and published this work into English. Vasey's edition, titled The Last Chance: Roads of Freedom IV, includes two parts: 1) Strange Friendship (Drôle d'amitié) – the two chapters which were previously published in 1949 in Sartre's magazine Les Temps modernes; and 2) The Last Chance (La dernière chance) – the text reconstructed by Bauer and Contat from Sartre's notes. This is the first time that these two parts have been available in English.

The novel series was adapted into a thirteen part television serial by David Turner for BBC Television in 1970, with Michael Bryant as Mathieu and directed by James Cellan Jones. The adaptation was nominated for several BAFTA awards for 1970. The entire series was screened by the British Film Institute over the weekend of 12–13 May 2012, attended by the director and several surviving cast members. The series had not been broadcast on television since 1977, and is unavailable on any format. In 2022, it was finally announced it would be repeated on BBC4.