Overview

An irresistible invitation to get inside one of the twentieth century's most infamous and fascinating relationships. These intimate love letters reveal the open relationship between de Beauvoir and Sartre, two of the twentieth century's groundbreaking thinkers. Simone de Beauvoir lived her feminist philosophy. She never married or had children, she had affairs with both men and women, and she actively defied the norms for women of her era. At the same time, she conducted an intense, long-term relationship with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she referred to as her husband. De Beauvoir and Sartre met as philosophy students in Paris in 1929. For over fifty years, until their deaths in the 1980s, the couple had a close open relationship. This book contains her letters to him, revealing the details of her everyday life and her passion for the man who shared her ideals. It is an intimate portrait of a woman living in an adventurous, complicated way in the name of individual freedom. 'For 51 years, the conversations between them created ideas, books, and a bond which other passions enraged or enriched, but never altogether ruptured. It was, for De Beauvoir, an experiment in loving' Guardian 'An opportunity to hear a vigorous and innovative thinker...speaking in her abrasive, touching, breathtakingly candid private voice' Sunday Times TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY QUINTIN HOARE

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9781529961973

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Reviews

There is more than a whiff of Les Liaisons Dangereuses about these pages * Spectator * This is a vivid piece of unexpurgated social history, and an opportunity to hear a vigorous and innovative thinker...speaking in her abrasive, touching, breathtakingly candid private voice * Sunday Times * Wonderful… what really shines through is de Beauvoir’s simultaneously maintained autonomy and symbiotic relationship with Sartre, her “beloved little one”, along with their total commitment to a life spent in pursuit of ideals, together * Irish Times *

Author Information

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agregation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycees at Marseille and Rouen from 1931-1937, and in Paris from 1938-1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on Les Temps Mordernes. The author of several books including The Mandarins (1957) which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, de Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986.

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