To Become Beauvoir

A new, revealing biography based on unpublished letters and diaries that tells the fascinating life of Simone de Beauvoir, one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century.
Simone de Beauvoir is an icon of female liberation, and her unconventional relationships both inspired and scandalized her contemporaries. But she is not only known for that, as she also stands out as a philosopher and novelist. Her novels won prestigious literary awards, and The Second Sex transformed the way we think about sex and gender.
Her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most important philosophers of the last century, was one of the most legendary of the 20th century, but for Beauvoir, that fame came at a cost: for decades, her thought was undervalued as unoriginal in the shadow of Sartre's ideas. However, recently discovered new materials show the value of her own philosophical thinking and the role it played in Sartre's work.
Kate Kirkpatrick draws on unpublished diaries and letters and reveals new personal details about Beauvoir's life that deepen the mystery of her figure. Why did this "feminist icon" construct her own image? Why did she lie so often about her relationship with Sartre or claim not to be a philosopher?