Becoming Beauvoir: A Life

by Kate Kirkpatrick

***🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year ***

Recommendations from our site

“Becoming Beauvoir is not just an outstanding philosophy book, it’s one of the best books I’ve read for a while. It’s of interest far beyond the narrow area of philosophy. Whether you love her or hate her, Simone de Beauvoir was a really significant cultural figure and it’s great to have such an interesting new biography of her.” Read more...

The Best Philosophy Books of 2019

Nigel Warburton, Philosopher

The book, according to the author

Q: You’ve written this biography of Beauvoir. How many years did it take you to research it?

Kate Kirkpatrick: The first time I presented any research about Simone de Beauvoir was in 2008. But since then I have written my doctorate on Sartre and so it’s very difficult to unpack which years count towards the scholarship that went into this biography. It’s been three years in focused writing, but I’ve been researching the period for much longer than that.

Read our full interview on Simone de Beauvoir with Kate Kirkpatrick