Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French existentialist philosopher and writer who examined freedom, gender and responsibility in philosophy, fiction and memoir. The Second Sex argues that womanhood is historically and socially produced rather than a fixed essence. The Mandarins turns the political loyalties and intimate conflicts of postwar intellectual life into a novel. A Very Easy Death records her mother's final illness with unsentimental attention to the body and family memory. All Said and Done looks back on a life of writing and commitment, while America Day by Day observes the United States through race, class and everyday encounters. Letters to Sartre offers a private record of an intellectual partnership. The Second Sex is the theoretical foundation; The Mandarins supplies the fullest fictional counterpart, and A Very Easy Death concentrates Beauvoir's autobiographical voice.