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The Prime of Life
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
Brief Description
The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated autobiography, The Prime of Life, recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure. First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in...
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Description
The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated autobiography, The Prime of Life, recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure.
First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in her twenties, thirties, and forties. Beginning as a recent graduate from the Sorbonne teaching high-school girls, we see de Beauvoir revel in the freedom her new financial independence brings.
We see her and Jean-Paul Sartre recognise the powerful romantic and intellectual partnership they have found in one another, as they fall in love and define their own unconventional parameters.
The Second World War comes, bringing austerity, violence, and questions of the reality of freedom and individual responsibility into de Beauvoir's life.
As relevant and penetrating as when first published, The Prime of Life offers rare insight into a truly fascinating mind.
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780241705391
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 03 October 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 28.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 199.0mm
Weight: 456g
Pages: 656
Collections
About the Author
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) was a French philosopher, novelist and essayist, and the lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir's first book, L'Invitee, was published in 1943. In 1945 she published Le Sang des autres, a novel dealing with the question of political involvement. De Beauvoir's breakthrough work was the semi-autobiographical Les Mandarins (1954), which won the Prix Goncourt. Roman Catholic authorities banned it and de Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex (1949), in which de Beauvoir argued that \"one is not born a woman; one becomes one\".
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