Leïla Slimani: ‘Salman Rushdie’s books made me feel I could become a writer’
The Lullaby author on identifying with Jo in Little Women, being terrified of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and why we’re still in debt to Steinbeck
July 2023
Observer book of the week
The Visionaries review – seers who were shaped by the shadow of war
The Visionaries by Wolfram Eilenberger review – four women who changed the world
May 2023
A Life of One’s Own by Joanna Biggs review – on the shoulders of giants
The lives of female authors provide inspiration for a woman who finds herself starting over after divorce
January 2023
The power of philosophy in prison
Letters: Dr Bríd Connolly responds to an article by Andy West on his experience of teaching incarcerated children
November 2022
Top 10s
Top 10 dissenting life stories
Laila Shawa obituary
November 2021
The books of my life
Siri Hustvedt: ‘I responded viscerally to De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex’
The US author on becoming a feminist, growing into Gertrude Stein, and the comfort of folk tales
October 2021
‘My intimacy with Simone de Beauvoir was unique… it was love’
As an autobiographical novel by the writer is published for the first time in English, her adopted daughter Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir talks about their bond
September 2021
Deborah Levy on Simone de Beauvoir’s lost autobiographical novella The Inseparables
The Inseparables – read an extract from the newly discovered novel by Simone de Beauvoir
December 2020
Simone de Beauvoir's 'remarkable' letters to Violette Leduc sold at auction
Sotheby’s, which sold the 297 letters, says they reveal ‘a complex and ambiguous relationship where unrequited passion and mistrust mingle’
November 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 books about great thinkers
From Kant’s routines to Frantz Fanon’s astonishing wartime work and Simone de Beauvoir’s vexed position in history, these books thread together ideas and the lives that animated them
September 2020
Juliette Gréco obituary
French chanteuse and actor who was the musical embodiment of the existentialist movement
August 2020
Intimate letters reveal Simone de Beauvoir’s role as an agony aunt
Inspired by the author’s unconventional love life, thousands of men and women wrote to ask for her advice on sex and sexuality, hidden letters reveal
April 2020
Simone de Beauvoir's 'too intimate' novel to be published after 75 years
Les Inséparables, which depicts the writer’s passionate friendship with a girl who later died, was withheld during her lifetime
February 2020
Parisian Lives by Deidre Bair review – deliciously indiscreet about Beckett and De Beauvoir
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir and Me review – a biographer’s voyage
August 2019
Book of the day
Becoming Beauvoir by Kate Kirkpatrick review – philosopher and pioneer
