Letters To Sartre

Description

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, and when asked about her own letters to him, she replied that they had been lost. But after her death, her literary executor and adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon Beauvoir, stumbled upon a parcel of faded letters addressed to "Monsieur Sartre". The publication of these letters caused a storm of controversy in Paris, because they seemed to reveal de Beauvoir as a manipulative and dependent women. What comes through strongly is that she was vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed. Frank and uncensored, they show de Beauvoir experimenting with her freedom within her love for Sartre, and trace the emotional and triangular complications of her life with him.

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.

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 *