Quiet Moments in a War - by Jean-Paul Sartre (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In the companion volume to the acclaimed Witness of my Life, Jean-Paul Sartre reveals his life as a soldier, a German prisoner, and a man of Resistance through letters between himself and his "beloved Beaver," Simone de Beauvoir.

Quiet Moments in a War tells the story of Jean-Paul Sartre at the peak of his powers and renown through the exchanging of ideas and intimacies with Simone de Beauvoir from 1940 to 1963. In the pages of this book, readers will find details on Sartre's war and his path to fame with the publication of his major works.

From September 1939 to June 1940, Sartre wrote Beauvoir almost daily as he waited from the frontlines for a German attack. While it was a time of fear and uncertainty, it doubled as a time of great productivity for Sartre as he completed the novel The Age of Reason and sketched out Being and Nothingness.

This collection of the letters between Sartre and Beauvoir completes the extraordinary correspondence of one of modern history's most celebrated couples while documenting the emergence of a great intellectual figure.

From the Back Cover

Quiet Moments in a War, the companion volume to the acclaimed Witness to My Life, reveals Jean-Paul Sartre at the peak of his powers and renown, engaged in an exchange of ideas and intimacies with his "beloved Beaver", Simone de Beauvoir. Spanning the years 1940-1963, these letters describe Sartre's war - as a soldier, a prisoner of the Germans, and a man of the Resistance - and chart his path to fame with the publication of his major works. From September 1939 to June 1940, Sartre wrote Beauvoir almost daily from the front as he waited for the Germans to attack. It was a time of great productivity for Sartre, as he wrote the novel The Age of Reason and sketched out Being and Nothingness. In late 1940, he wrote his first play while interned in a German prison camp. The letters after his release reveal the wartime uncertainties and delays in securing a production of The Flies, an existential retelling of the Oresteia with a thinly veiled protest against acquiescence toward the German occupation. After 1942 there are fewer letters, as the couple was less often apart, but extraordinary ones. In almost every one, there is mention of a new play, novel, or essay underway. In 1946, Sartre writes Beauvoir from New York, where No Exit has opened and he is the toast of the town: "Here it is the same as in Paris: everyone is talking about me and everywhere I'm dragged through the mud"; and in 1959, from the Irish estate of John Huston, where the two men were working on a film about Freud. The collection ends in 1963, with a simple statement written by Beauvoir after Sartre's death and shortly before her own: "This letter is the last that received from Sartre. Thereafter, during our briefseparations, we used the telephone". Quiet Moments in a War completes the extraordinary correspondence of one of modern history's most celebrated couples, and documents the emergence of a great intellectual figure.