novel and later marries him and has a child by him. Lewis Brogan (considered to be Nelson Algren, to whom the book is dedicated) is an American writer with whom Anne has an extended affair. Scriassine — David Cesarani in the biography Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind, suggests that Scriassine's character is drawn on Arthur Koestler. In volume 3 of her autobiography, de Beauvoir denies that The Mandarins is a roman à clef. She writes: "I loathe romans à clef as much as I loathe fictionalized biographies." However, she says that "Anne was made from me, true, ... but I have made her into a woman in whom I do not recognize myself." She does admit that "of all my characters, Lewis is the one who approaches closest to a living model.... It so happens that Algren, in his reality, was very representative of what I wanted to represent." Regarding the other characters, she says, "Henri, whatever people have said, is not Camus; not at all. He is young, has dark hair, he runs a newspaper; the resemblance stops there." Furthermore: "[Henri] in his relations with the Communist Party and in his attitude to Socialism, resembles Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, and not Camus in the slightest." And as for Dubreuilh, she writes, "The identification of Sartre with Dubreuilh is no less aberrant; the only similarities between them are their common curiosity, concern with the world and fanaticism in work; but Dubreuilh is twenty years older than Sartre." References External links Mim Udovitch, "Hot and Epistolary", The New York Times, 6 December 1998 — review of De Beauvoir's A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren, and the facts behind that plot line of the novel. 1954 French novels Roman à clef novels Novels by Simone de Beauvoir Novels set in France Novels about philosophers Prix Goncourt winning works Albert Camus Arthur Koestler Works about Jean-Paul Sartre Cultural depictions of Jean-Paul Sartre Cultural depictions of Simone de Beauvoir