they really don't make adults like this anymore ( )

Román Mandaríni je zajímavé čtení z prostředí francouzských levicových intelektuálů v poválečné Francii

DJ has age wear issues, but VG Cond. overall - 4th printing (scarce edition - only HV signed edition found) ( )

The Mandarins has been called Ms. de Beauvoir's most famous novel. Taking place in the mid 1940s, France's City of Lights society is getting back to some semblance of normalcy at the end of World War II while the rest of Europe continues to struggle under the weight of devastating death and destruction. Loosely based on de Beauvoir's relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, Mandarins is a biting commentary on politics, philosophy, and psychology of the times. Two different plots run simultaneously. First, there is the struggle to keep a once popular war-time leftist newspaper relevant after the war. Then, there is the first person account of Anne's romance with an American author (autobiographical sketches of Simone herself with Sartre). In truth, I found all of the characters outrageously annoying. War has brought Henri and Paula together and peacetime begins to pull them apart. As World War II draws to a close, Henri sees it the prefect opportunity to escape France and ultimately leave his ten year relationship with Paula. Henri has decided they are no longer the same people and their relationship has worn too thin for mending. He considers himself a man who needs to say something, not only to the world around him, but to the future world not yet realized. He does most of his talking through the language of sex with other women. Paula constantly forgives Henri his affairs of the body because she thinks his heart belongs to her. I could go on, but I'm not sure what the point would be. Blah blah blah rubbish.

Nothing to do with China but everything to do with France.

An intellectual is an educated person whose interests are studying and other activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort. Simone de Beauvoir was proud to be an intellectual and for much of her adult life she operated amongst the intellectual elites in France, often being the only woman in the group. The most challenging periods for her cadre of left wing thinkers was after the liberation of Paris in 1944, when some of them who had been leading figures in the French Resistance, had to come to terms with a new French Republic ultimately lead by General De Gaulle a right of centre politician. She covered this period in the third part of her autobiography [La Force des Choses] published in 1963, however earlier she had written [Les Mandarins] published in 1954 a novel based on those events immediately after the war, which became an international best seller.

In her novel Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, De Beauvoir herself, the American Nelson Algren and Arthur Koestler are portrayed as thinly disguised characters acting out some of the imaginary events based on incidents from De Beauvoir's own life. It was an exciting and stimulating time for those characters who were desperate to play a part in politics and literature after the end of the second world war, it was also a time when those people found a new freedom to think and act after the German Occupation, although still bearing the scars of the war years. Simone De Beauvoir catches this brilliantly as a person who lived through those times: it reeks of authenticity. There are two main threads to the novel: the first is the battle to keep a war time left wing newspaper in circulation after the end of the war with Henri Perron and Robert Dubreuillh (based on the characters of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre) struggling to keep their paper out of the hands of the Communist Party; the second thread is Anne Debreuillh's (De Beauvoir) affair with the American author Lewis Brogan (Nelson Algren). The storylines of these two threads are told in alternate chapters with the battle for the newspaper told in the third person and the American affair told in the first person, with the stories overlapping.

The private lives of the characters are explored in some detail. Henri Perron's partner Paula leads a life that she devotes to Henri, willing to accommodate his affairs with younger women, but ultimately heading for a nervous breakdown. Anne Debreuillh's daughter Nadine a strong independent young woman who has an affair with Henri, but strictly on her terms. Henri also has an affair with Josette a beautiful young starlet whose mother may have collaborated with the Germans, this will come back to haunt Henri and although he is portrayed as a man of integrity much admired by younger acolytes he is compromised by events as are all of the characters in this novel. Anne's affair with the American author is a love story, but one that cannot bridge the gap between the new/young Americans and the old Europeans. De Beauvoir writes with painful honesty here and as in all the love affairs that she details; the battle of the sexes are picked clean through her brilliant character portraits. As well as the love stories, disturbing events lurk in the background; there is a gang seeking out and murdering war time collaborators that gets too close to Henri and Nadine. There is a spiteful war of words between left wing writers and thinkers that aims at character assassination and then there is the struggle to hold at bay those frenchmen and woman who were sympathetic to the German invaders and who are encouraged by the political drift of the French government towards the right.

The busy intellectual lives of Henri and Robert Dubreuill are depicted by an author who had an immense admiration for hard work. The two men are forever dashing to meetings, heading of crisis, re-inventing themselves, dreaming of a life less busy, but forever denying themselves the opportunity of resting when the chance arrives, they are both scared of not being able to make a difference. It was a world where men were in control and women were very much on the sidelines as one of the characters is heard to say:

Women? Either they are idiots or they’re unbearable.

However this is said by one of the rich young men before he tangles with the ferocious Nadine. De Beauvoir's female characters are strong in their own way, but they had little opportunity to work at the same level as the men in 1950's France. Above all this novel feels like a realistic representation of the life and times of artistic or politically motivated people.

Because it is a novel about the so-called intelligentsia De Beauvoir has plenty of opportunity to rehearse political and philosophical thoughts of people on the left wing of society. She does this through some lively conversation as her characters ruminate on their own ideas and try to influence others. She gets this so right (even in the English translation that I read) that it is no stretch of the imagination to surmise that she is recording snippets of actual conversations that she was party to at the time. Certainly Anne's conversations with Lewis Brogan feel like she is putting the record straight, even if in real life De Beauvoir did not have those actual conversations with Nelson Algren, obviously she has no trouble in getting inside the heads of her characters.

This is the second time I have read this novel; I probably read it first time round for the salacious episodes concerning the private lives of her characters, but at over 700 pages there has to be more to a novel than gossip and sex and even on my first reading I was mightily impressed with the story and the reading experience. This time around I am convinced it is one of the best novels I have read. I found myself fully immersed in the lives of Simone's characters as they attempted to come to terms with post war France. These are real people albeit at a certain elite level of society, but they are people who cared about their country, about the human condition, but like nearly everybody they could be corrupted, manipulated or just let their emotions lead them by the tail. Real people, real lives and so much to think about makes this a 5 star read. ( )