Toril Moi

This challenge to the dominant trends in contemporary feminist and cultural thought, arguing for a feminism of freedom inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex", brings together Moi's work on Freud and Bourdieu, and her studies of desire and knowledge in literature.

This volume of Simone de Beauvoir's legendary autobiography presents Beauvoir at the height of her international fame and portrays her inner struggle with aging. Beauvoir recounts her difficult long-distance romance with novelist Nelson Algren and her involvement with Claude Lanzmann (the future director of Shoah). She also vividly describes her travels with Sartre to Brazil and Cuba, reveals her private sense of despair in reaction to French atrocities in Algeria, and confronts her own deepening depression. Simone de Beauvoir's outstanding achievement is to have left us an admirable record of her unceasing battle to become an independent woman and writer.Introduction by Toril Moi