What a lot Lisa Appignanesi has packed into such a slim volume. This is the ideal introduction to Simone de Beauvoir, capturing the woman, the philosopher, the lover, the public intellectual, and the fluidity between these roles. Appignanesi is brilliantly nuanced on the emotional costs of de Beauvoir's complicated `pact' with Sartre and on the way the philosophy emerged, hard-won, ... Read moreout of the life. It's a book that's attentive to de Beauvoir's times and alive to her urgent relevance to ours. Dr Lara Feigel, Author of Free Woman, King's College, London. Show Less