BEAUVOIR, Simone de L’invitée. Roman. Paris: Gallimard. [1945.]
8vo. Publisher’s black boards printed in blue and peach after a design by Mario Prassinos depicting three figures with interlinked arms, spine decorated in blue and lettered in gilt; pp. 418, [2 (colophon, blank)]; short splits to joints at head, a few small chips to spine, hinges cracked; uniform light toning throughout; a very good copy; bookseller’s ticket of Librairies Cattan, Cairo to front free endpaper.
No. 777 of 1000 copies of Simone de Beauvoir’s first novel, L’invitée (She Came to Stay, first 1943), widely considered a fictionalised account of her and Sartre’s relationship with the sisters Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz, both actors.
Olga Kosakiewicz, to whom the present work is dedicated, was one of De Beauvoir’s students, and Sartre began a relationship with Wanda after being rejected by Olga; Olga would later marry a former lover of Beauvoir’s. The novel is set on the eve of the Second World War, and De Beauvoir here combines the sisters into a single character, Xavière, who enters into a menage à trois with the director Pierre and the actress Françoise (who ultimately murders Xavière), respectively inspired by Sartre and De Beauvoir.
SKU: 2124927