Dangerous Liaison

The renowned biographer offers a tale of intellectual and romantic rivalry in this “dazzling portrait of Sartre and De Beauvoir’s relationship” (The Guardian).   Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were two of the twentieth century’s most prominent authors and philosophers, and the story of their decades-long relationship is one of the most famous literary romances of all time. From the corridors of the Sorbonne to the cafés of Paris’s Left Bank, Sartre and de Beauvoir were intimate rivals in both intellectual debate and sexual conquest.   In A Dangerous Liaison, Carole Seymour-Jones vividly describes how the beautiful and gifted de Beauvoir fell in love with the squinting, arrogant, hard-drinking Sartre. We learn about that first summer of 1929, filled with heated debates and dangerous ideas that led them to experiment with new ways of living. We hear how Sartre compromised with the Nazis and fell into a Soviet honey-trap. And, thanks to recently discovered letters written by the avowed feminist de Beauvoir, Seymour-Jones reveals the full story behind the couple’s philosophy of free love, including de Beauvoir’s lesbianism and her pimping of younger girls for Sartre in order to keep his love.