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The Inseparables
- Author
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Narrator
- Rachel Bavidge
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 2 September 2021
- Run Time
- 3 hours 18 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
'Life without her would be death'
The lost novel from the author of The Second Sex.
The compulsive story of two friends growing up and falling apart.
INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY.
When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age, but walks with the confidence of an adult. Under her red coat, she hides terrible burn scars. And when she imagines beautiful things, she gets goosebumps... Secretly Sylvie believes that Andrée is a prodigy about whom books will be written.
The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But they can't stay like this forever.
Written in 1954, five years after The Second Sex, the novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. This first English edition includes an afterword by her adopted daughter, who discovered the manuscript hidden in a drawer, and photographs of the real-life friendship which inspired and tormented the author.
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN. WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM SYLVIE LE BON DE BEAUVOIR.
© Simone de Beauvoir 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Critics Review
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This 'lost' novel by a giant of 20th-century letters reads surprisingly like a French Elena Ferrante... Lauren Elkin's translation is undistractingly smooth
Daily Telegraph
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Translated by Lauren Elkin with exquisite finesse, it utterly conveys both de Beauvoir's heady sensuality and its immediate opposite, observant restraint... The Inseparables is a ravishing work of art
Financial Times
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A succulent taster for those who don't know de Beauvoir's work and, for everyone else, a treat
Daily Mail
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A poignant and sensitive portrait of female friendship which acutely captures the agonizing mysteries of intimacy. The translation was gorgeous, and there were lines that absolutely punched me in the gut
Anbara Salam author of Belladonna
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Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls - and the pressures that sunder them
Spectator
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A passionate and tragic autobiographical story
Vanity Fair
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Gorgeously written, intelligent, passionate, and in many ways foreshadows such contemporary works as Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend
Oprah Daily
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Here is an attentive and unintimate love, one that relishes the idea of imagining, but never knowing and never delimiting, the infinite expanses of another person's mind
New Yorker
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In Lauren Elkin's fine translation, the lucid, sculpted prose can flare into starbursts of introspective sensuality... Its focus and restraint show that, even in maturity, Beauvoir could write like a dutiful daughter of the French classics
The Times
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[An] absorbing novel... The Inseparables is a moving coming-of-age tale about two girls battling with who and what they want to be in 20th-century Paris
Monocle
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Narrator
- Rachel Bavidge
- Duration
- 3 hours 18 minutes
- Release Date
- 2 September 2021
- ISBN
- 9781529193367
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction, Classic fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: identity / belonging, Narrative theme: coming of age, Fiction in translation, Feminism and feminist theory
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin. 'Life without her would be death'The lost novel from the author of The Second Sex.The compulsive story of two friends growing up and falling apart.INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY.When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age, but walks with the confidence of an adult. Under her red coat, she hides terrible burn scars. And when she imagines beautiful things, she gets goosebumps... Secretly Sylvie believes that Andrée is a prodigy about whom books will be written.The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But they can't stay like this forever.Written in 1954, five years after The Second Sex, the novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. This first English edition includes an afterword by her adopted daughter, who discovered the manuscript hidden in a drawer, and photographs of the real-life friendship which inspired and tormented the author.TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN. WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM SYLVIE LE BON DE BEAUVOIR.© Simone de Beauvoir 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
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