Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beauvoir 1940-1963 [Hardcover]

Jean-Paul Sartre (Author), Simone de Beauvoir (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1993

A collection of letters by the author of Being and Nothingness depicts Sartre as a soldier, a prisoner of the Germans, and a man of Resistance and charts his path to fame with the publication of his major works.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sartre's (1905-1980) impassioned, tender wartime letters to de Beauvoir (1908-1986) intersect with history. The great majority of the correspondence gathered here was written in 1940, when the French philosopher, an army private in the meteorological service, wrote Being and Nothingness and his novel The Age of Reason while the Nazis invaded Holland and Belgium and threatened to take Paris. Writing to "my darling Beaver," he tells de Beauvoir about his incessant reading, his evolving philosophy of existentialism and, in the spirit of their open relationship, about his affairs with other women. He was captured by the Germans in 1940. After his return to Nazi-occupied Paris in March 1941, his letters discuss The Flies , a thinly veiled protest play. Noteworthy among the handful of postwar letters are two recording his hectic 1959 visit to American film director John Huston at his Irish estate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Following the publication in English of Sartre's Witness to My Life ( LJ 1/92), this volume contains the final two decades of his letters to his lifelong companion. Much of the present collection, which was edited by de Beauvoir before her death, describes life during World War II, including Sartre's imprisonment by the Germans. Poignantly, the book ends with a note by de Beauvoir explaining that Sartre's letter of July 25, 1963, was the last she received: "thereafter... we used the telephone." To be read with de Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre (LJ 2/15/92), whose unexpurgated text suggests how much she omitted from his published correspondence. Highly recommended to virtually all public and academic libraries.
- Francisca Goldsmith, Berke ley P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684195666
• ISBN-13: 978-0684195667
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,414,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, playwright, and biographer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His major works include "No Exit," "Nausea," "The Wall," "The Age of Reason," "Critique of Dialectical Reason," "Being and Nothingness," and "Roads to Freedom," an allegory of man's search for commitment, and not, as the man at the off-licence says, an everyday story of French country folk.