title: The Mandarins (Norton Paperback Fiction)
author:  Simone de Beauvoir 
description: Much more than a roman clef . . . a moving and engrossing novel. -- <i>New York Times</i><br /><br />Salty, frank, and realistic. -- <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>
zlib_text: **SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR**  
   _ **The Second Sex**_
  
  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 in lycées in 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 many books, including the novel _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 have lived in Paris for more
  than forty years and are both graduates of Rutgers University, New Jersey.
  Borde and Malovany-Chevallier were faculty members at the Institut d’Études
  Politiques. They have been translating books and articles on social science,
  art, and feminist literature for many years and