SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at lycées at Marseille and Rouen from 1931 to 1937, and in Paris from 1938 to 1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on Les Temps Modernes. The author of several books, including The Mandarins (1957), which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986.

CONSTANCE BORDE and SHEILA MALOVANY-CHEVALLIER, both American, are longtime residents of France and former teachers at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris.

JUDITH THURMAN, author of Isak Dinesen and Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

"The effect of the new translation, which should be applauded, is to make Beauvoir more herself ... still lively, still apropos." --Slate

"This is the edition Beauvoir herself would have wanted, one so true to the original that we can hear her voice in the text. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier's new translation is long overdue, and it is a triumph." --Margaret Simons, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, Southern Illinois University

"[Borde and Malovany-Chevallier's translation] can be read with confidence, enlightenment, and pleasure.... A significant step forward and a remarkable achievement. So if you're one of those people who always meant to read The Second Sex--why not now?" --Women's Review of Books

"From Eve's apple to Virginia Woolf's room of her own, Beauvoir's treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge."
--Vogue

"[A] long-awaited achievement." --"Book Bench," newyorker.com

Publisher: Vintage

Pub date: 2011-05-03

Length: 832 pages