Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir spent a lifetime practising her philosophy. Long before the publication of "The Second Sex", her classic manifesto for the liberated woman, she had determined to create herself according to her beliefs. Her 51-year partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, and all the "contingent loves" and many paradoxes that shaped it, was all the more remarkable for the fruits of its joint labours. This biography aims to shed new light on de Beauvoir's friendships with Camus, Picasso, Genet and Giacometti, and contains correspondence between her and her American lover, Nelson Algren. The joint authors were themselves friends of de Beauvoir.