Dirty Hands

Dirty Hands (French: Les Mains sales) is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre. It was first performed on 2 April 1948 at the Theatre Antoine in Paris, directed by Pierre Valde and starring François Périer, Marie Olivier and André Luguet. A political drama set in the fictional country of Illyria between 1943 and 1945, the story is about the assassination of a leading politician. The story is told mainly in the form of a flashback, with the killer describing how he carried out his mission. The killer's identity is established from the beginning, but the question is whether his motivations were political or personal. Thus, the play's main theme is not on who did it but on why it was done.