Best Selling Books by Simone de Beauvoir

By turns surprising and revelatory, this sixth volume in the Beauvoir Series presents newly discovered writings and lectures while providing new translations and contexts for Simone de Beauvoir''s more familiar writings. Spanning Beauvoir''s career from the 1940s through 1986, the pieces explain the paradoxes in her political and feminist stances, including her famous 1972 announcement of a "conversion to feminism" after decades of activism on behalf of women. Feminist Writings documents and contextualizes Beauvoir''s thinking, writing, public statements, and activities in the services of causes like French divorce law reform and the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution. In addition, the volume provides new insights into Beauvoir''s complex thinking and illuminates her historic role in linking the movements for sexual freedom, sexual equality, homosexual rights, and women''s rights in France.

Simone de Beauvoir, still a teen, began a diary while a philosophy student at the Sorbonne. Written in 1926-27—before Beauvoir met Jean-Paul Sartre—the diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and times and offer critical insights into her early intellectual interests, philosophy, and literary works. Presented for the first time in translation, this fully annotated first volume of the Diary includes essays from Barbara Klaw and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical, and literary significance. It remains an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir’s independent thinking and her influence on philosophy, feminism, and the world.

In three interviews, the Marxist historian and scholar Perry Anderson takes Sartre on a wide-ranging tour of his philosophy and politics

A captivating novella about long-term relationships, getting older and how to live a good life, by the great Simone de Beauvoir. Nicole and André, a retired French couple, take a summer holiday to Russia. It is the 1960s and Russia is a beautiful, complicated place. Their guide is Macha, André''s daughter from a previous relationship - a woman they both love. Adventure, inspiration, good food and good vodka are promised. Once thrilled by their romance, Nicole and André have now become too used to each other. Both harbour a growing feeling of not being fully understood - of being alone. Father and daughter engage in the grand debates of East-West relations, nationalism and socialism. But getting older, long-term relationships and how to enjoy life turn out to be the more pressing issues.

"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir''s career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir''s writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translation of the 1945 play The Useless Mouths, written in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Other pieces were discovered after Beauvoir''s death in 1986, such as the 1965 short novel "Misunderstanding in Moscow," involving an elderly French couple who confront their fears of aging. Two additional previously unknown texts include the fragmentary "Notes for a Novel," which contains the seed of what she later would call "the problem of the Other," and a lecture on postwar French theater titled Existentialist Theater. The collection notably includes the eagerly awaited translation of Beauvoir''s contribution to a 1965 debate among Jean-Paul Sartre and other French writers and intellectuals, "What Can Literature Do?" Prefaces to well-known works such as Bluebeard and Other Fairy Tales,La Bâtarde, and James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years are also available in English for the first time, alongside essays and other short articles. A landmark contribution to Beauvoir studies and French literary studies, the volume includes informative and engaging introductory essays by prominent and rising scholars. Contributors are Meryl Altman, Elizabeth Fallaize, Alison S. Fell, Sarah Gendron, Dennis A. Gilbert, Laura Hengehold, Eleanore Holveck, Terry Keefe, J. Debbie Mann, Frederick M. Morrison, Catherine Naji, Justine Sarrot, Liz Stanley, Ursula Tidd, and Veronique Zaytzeff.

Das berühmte Standardwerk von Simone de Beauvoir. Die universelle Standortbestimmung der Frau, die aus jahrtausendealter Abhängigkeit von männlicher Vorherrschaft ausgebrochen ist, hat nichts an Gültigkeit eingebüßt. Die Scharfsichtigkeit der grundlegenden Analyse tritt in der Neuübersetzung noch deutlicher hervor.

A searing denunciation of French torture in Algeria by a classic feminist intellect In 1960, as the Algerian War for Independence entered its sixth year, 22-year-old Djamila Boupacha was arrested for allegedly planting a bomb in a university cafeteria. While in custody, she was tortured and raped by French soldiers. Her case would have been buried like countless others had it not been for the efforts of her lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, and the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir to transform it into an international cause célèbre. Djamila Boupacha is the culmination of this campaign to expose the systemic violence of colonial rule. “To protest in the name of morality against ‘excesses’ or ‘abuses,’” Beauvoir writes, “is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no ‘abuses’ or ‘excesses’ here, simply an all-pervasive system.” More than a historical document, the book is a profound exploration of morality, complicity and resistance. A classic text of anticolonialism, this is a story that demands to be read—and remembered.

Simone de Beauvoir’s gripping classic of a woman striving for perfection Laurence lives what appears to be an ideal existence. Her life features the trappings of 1960s Parisian bourgeoisie: money, a handsome husband, two daughters, and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though she can’t stop thinking about work while she’s at home and she dreams of domesticity while at the office. But Laurence gave up on happiness long ago, choosing instead to manifest the perfect image of wife, mother, daughter, homemaker, and career woman. It is only when she is relentlessly torn by the competing needs of her family and jarred into recognition of her own predicament by the despair of her ten-year-old daughter, Catherine, that Laurence begins to resist the hand she has been dealt. The Image of Her, the 1966 final novel by Simone de Beauvoir, freshly translated here by Lauren Elkin, is rooted in the feminist revolutions of its era, yet it remains a strikingly relevant confrontation with the limits that society places on women and their power.

Covering the years 1944 to 1952, this volume of the autobiography of legendary feminist and writer Simone de Beauvoir gives us not only an intimate account of her relationship with Sartre, but also a wonderful portrait of Parisian intellectual life. During this troubled period, French intellectuals grappled with the horrors of the Holocaust, the onset of the Cold War, and the beginning of colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria. Beauvoir weaves memorable descriptions and anecdotes about leading members of the French postwar scene, including Genet, Camus, Richard Wright, Artaud, and Cocteau, with an account of her travels in Europe, Africa, and the United States. She also gives us an unforgettable chronicle of her romance with novelist Nelson Algren and of her struggle to live as an independent woman and writer.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) ha pasado a la historia como una de las figuras del siglo xx más comprometidas con los problemas de la sociedad occidental. Militante activa en favor de la emancipación de la mujer, su obra es la apasionada búsqueda de una moral profundamente humana. Destacan en su obra La invitada, Las bellas imágenes, Todos los hombres son mortales, Ceremonia del adiós, La mujer rota...

La más celebrada obra de la escritora, esta historia de un triángulo amoroso entre dos adultos y una jovencita pone al descubierto las más oscuras ambigüedades de la moral al uso.

Autobiography of French author Simone deBeauvoir.

"L''Amérique n''est nulle part. Mais la musique échappe aux rigueurs de l''espace" (p. 179-180). A la fois essai et témoignage, ce livre a été écrit à la suite d''un séjour de quatre mois aux Etats-Unis, en 1947. Selon le préfacier, le regard de S. de Beauvoir, en particulier sur l''enseignement américain, "est très révélateur de la combinaison d''égalitarisme et d''élitisme, assez typiquement française, à laquelle elle est attachée" (cf. la préface, p. i-xvii).