Product Description

A Harper Perennial Modern Classics reissue of this unflinching examination of post-war French intellectual life, and an amazing chronicle of love, philosophy and politics from one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. An epic romance, a philosophical argument and an honest and searing portrayal of what it means to be a woman, this is Simone de Beauvoir's most famous and profound novel. De Beauvoir sketches the volatile intellectual and political climate of post-war France with amazing deftness and insight, peopling her story with fictionalisations of the most important figures of the era, such as Camus, Sartre and Nelson Algren. Her novel examines the painful split between public and private life that characterised the female experience in the mid-20th century, and addresses the most difficult questions of gender and choice. It is an astonishing work of intellectual athleticism, yet also a moving romance, a love story of passion and depth. Long out of print, this masterpiece is now reissued as part of the Harper Perennial Modern Classics series so that a whole new generation can discover de Beauvoir's magic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74147 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Review
'A remarkable novel.' Iris Murdoch, Sunday Times 'A dazzling panorama of the giants of the Left Bank.' New Statesman 'The characters, especially the women, are uninhibited and sometimes predatory. The dialogues are salty, frank and realistic. The characters' amorous adventures are set down with microscopic exactitude.' Guardian 'There are few, a very few, novels from which one comes away with the feeling of having travelled, experienced, learned! such a book is The Mandarins.' Bookman

About the Author
Simon de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. A close friend of the writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and well-known as a leader of the Existentialist movement in Paris. Her famous feminist work, The Second Sex, was hailed as a landmark study of women, and her novels, including The Woman Destroyed and She Came to Stay, have become well-loved classics. She died in 1968.

Customer Reviews

Don't let the philosophy put you off!
This is a cracking good read, though it might possibly have benefited from some pruning by the author. I first read it in the early 1960s when Existensialism was highly fashionable. I'm ashamed to say the only bits I remembered were Henri and Nadine's trip to Portugal at the beginning and the gruesome disposal of the body of a murdered former Nazi collaborator at the end. Rereading it was a fascinating experience. I found the characters much more like flesh and blood in the real world than spokesmen and of course spokeswomen for a philosophical movement. I found myself really caring what happened to them. Presumably that's partly because some of the Existensialists' point of view has been incorporated into mainstream attitudes to life. It's also because the author was a great story-teller quite apart from being a philosopher.

It now seems odd that highly intelligent people, like the author and her circle, who had just survived occupation by one sort of totalitarian regime should be so unwilling to reject out of hand a different variety of totalitarianism, despite being well aware of Stalin's excesses, but there is nothing like post 1989 hindsight. The interplay between Resistance heroes and the compromisers or worse is fascinating; which of us in whatever country would have the courage to be the former or the strength not to be the latter?

So, go and read it and don't let fear of philosophy and intellectualism put you off!

essential/existential/exceptional
as an avid fan of the existentialist movement i came to De Bouviour's work strangely late; odd, considering that i started reading existentialism with Iris Murdoch, a writer who's quote adorns most copies of this novel. i had started with Simoné's 'she came to stay' and got used to her indivdual style of veiled biography and realised that, unlike her other contemporaries (and her partner; Sartre) hers are not so much philosophical moral tales, as a portrait of those around her that lived their whole lives by their philosophy- you get the very truth of what it's like to exist as an existentialist, to be (or fail to be) what you write about. The Mandarins is her greatest expression of this unique style- an astonishingly heart-rending story of post-war life, people trying to forget, people trying to act like heroes, accusers and the bourgiouse elite. paris is beautifully represented in real colour and vibrancy and at the heart of the story is a powerful friendship between one genious and his mentor, a friendship that falls apart through politics- something i found terrible and gripping to find myself a bystander to. don't belive the other bad review, this book was one of the most all enveloping works of literature i have ever experienced. if you're even slightly interesed in the movement this should be your guide. it is truly essential.

A lot of shoulder shrugging
Dubreuilh shrugged his shoulders. Nadine shrugged her shoulders. There are exactly 140 shoulder shruggings in The Mandarins. It is annoying. First, I thought, maybe, it was the translation. So, I checked the original and found out that the excruciating shrugs were in the French version too (elle haussa les epaules). When people are not shrugging their shoulders, they are shaking their heads. Simone de Beauvoir, whose life and accomplishments I find fascinating, is not that great a story teller. Which is a shame because she always has interesting things to tell. The Mandarins is a captivating story if you can get past the style with which the dialogues are delivered. Simone de Beauvoir had told that this was not a biography, it was fiction. But, still, I am sure that it gives a pretty accurate account of how the intellectuals lived, contemplated, worked and played, especially just after the war. Camus, Sartre and many others are in there under thin disguise.