Tete-A-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre

nEnthralling... Here we find an ugly, walleyed existentialist philosopher, the elegantly beautiful author of The Second Sex and the Gallic equivalent of a bevy of young starlets who share the bed of one or the other--or sometimes both. Readers will turn these pages alternately mesmerized and appalled. -- Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book WorldPassionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays Sartre and Beauvoir up close.

T te- -T te magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship. nThey are one of the world's legendary couples. We can't think of one without thinking of the other. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre-those passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers-had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. With T te-a-T te, distinguished biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays them up close, in their most intimate moments. Students will witness Beauvoir and Sartre with their circle, holding court in Paris cafes. They'll 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. They'll follow along on their many travels, involving meetings with dignitaries such as Roosevelt, Khrushchev, and Castro-and listen in on the couple's conversations about Sartre's Nausea, Being and Nothingness, and Words, and Beauvoir's The Second Sex, The Mandarins, and her memoirs. They'll hear the anguished discussions that led Sartre to refuse the Nobel Prize. The impact of their writings on modern thought cannot be overestimated, but Beauvoir and Sartre are remembered just as much for the lives they led. They were brilliant, courageous, profoundly innovative individuals, and T te-a-T te shows the passion, energy, daring, humor,