In her most famous novel, Simone de Beauvoir does not flinch in her look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of World War II. Drawing on those surrounding her—-Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler—-and her passionate love affair with Nelson Algren, Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time. At once and engrossing drama and an intriguing political tale, The Mandarins is the emotional odyssey of a woman torn between her inner desire and her public life. The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.

"The Mandarins is not only an exposition that summarizes the cultural life of France in the post-war era but it's also the novel of vast and impossible love."