This recently rediscovered novel from the author of The Second Sex is the compulsive story of two close friends growing up and falling apart.

The lost novel from the author of The Second Sex

When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age, but walks with the confidence of an adult. Secretly Sylvie believes that Andrée is a prodigy about whom books will be written. The girls 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.

TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN - INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY