The Mandarins
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First published in 1954 and awarded the Prix Goncourt that same year, The Mandarins is Simone de Beauvoir’s great post-war novel, a searching portrait of a generation of French intellectuals trying to find their bearings after the Liberation. Set in Paris from the final months of 1944 onwards, it follows a close circle of writers, journalists and thinkers as they confront the moral and political dilemmas of a changed Europe: the legacy of the Resistance, the rise of the Cold War, the revelations of Stalinism and the uncertain responsibility of the intellectual. Its central figures include Henri Perron, a writer and newspaper editor, and Anne Dubreuilh, a psychiatrist whose private life is entangled with the wider struggles of her circle.
Moving between political debate and intimate relationships, Beauvoir examines the difficult choices that arise when personal freedom meets historical responsibility. The novel draws on the atmosphere and arguments of her own intellectual milieu, while remaining a work of fiction rather than autobiography. Dedicated to the American writer Nelson Algren, it is one of Beauvoir’s most ambitious literary achievements: a passionate, unsparing account of love, ideology and the effort to act meaningfully in an unsettled world.
From the book
“Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins
On The Mandarins
“A dazzling panorama of the giants of the Left Bank.”
— New Statesman