Description

When Andree joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andree is small for her age but walks with the confidence of an adult.

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 as the girls grow into young women, the pressures of society mount, threatening everything.

This novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir’s lifetime. It tells the story of the real-life friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the twentieth century.

‘Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls – and the pressures that sunder them’ Spectator

TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN – INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY

Publisher Review

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 * 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 * A succulent taster for those who don't know de Beauvoir's work and, for everyone else, a treat * Daily Mail * 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 Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls - and the pressures that sunder them * Spectator *