Tete-A-Tete - Hardcover

Rowley, Hazel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701175087 ISBN 13: 9780701175085

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2006

Synopsis

They are one of the world's legendary couples. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Startre - those passionate, free-thinking Existentialist philosopher-writers - had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Hazel Rowley portrays them up close: we witness Beauvoir and Sartre with their circle, holding court in Paris cafes. We learn the details of their infamous romantic entanglements with the young Olga Kosakiewicz and others; of their efforts to protest the wars in Algeria and Vietnam; and of Beauvoir's tempestuous love affair with Nelson Algren. We hear the anguished discussions that would lead to Sartre's refusal of the Nobel Prize, and listen in on the couple as they comment on each other's great works. The impact of their writings on modern thought can hardly be overestimated, but Beauvoir and Sartre are remembered just as much for the lives they led. Theirs is a great story - and a great story is precisely what Beauvoir and Sartre most wanted their lives to be.

About this title

Review:

`...Rowley's in-depth analysis...is fertile territory...such an
evocative writer'
-- Saturday Herald

From the Publisher:

A highly readable dual biography, this is the first book to concentrate exclusively on the relationship between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir and draws on revelatory letters and diaries previously unseen, as well as on the tesimony of people who have not wanted to give interviews before.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0701175087
• ISBN 13: 9780701175085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448