A Transatlantic Love Affair : Letters to Nelson Algren Book

In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir met Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Nelson Algren in Chicago, and it was love at first sight. A passionate affair ensued, spanning 20 years and four continents in an era when a transatlantic flight took 24 hours and overseas telephone calls were a luxury. A Transatlantic Love Affair collects the more than 300 love letters written in English by de Beauvoir to Algren. Unique among the prolific correspondence de Beauvoir conducted throughout her life, these letters involved someone not at all of her world. De Beauvoir was forced to explain to Algren everything that usually went without saying: her background, her life in Paris, and the political situation in Paris. The result is a cross between a personal memoir and an insider's intellectual history of Left Bank life in postwar Paris, populated with luminaries including Albert Camus, Truman Capote, Colette, Alberto Giacometti, Margaret Mead, and Richard Wright.