Madsen, Axel. Hearts and Minds: The Common Journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Morrow, 1977.

Form the publisher:

Jean-Paul Sartre met Simone de Beauvoir in the spring of 1929.He was 23,she 21,he a city boy,she a country girl.  Both were in their last year at the Sorbonne, she in philosophy, he in literature.  They  quickly became intellectual companions and lovers and have remained so without marriage for nearly 50years (until Sartre became blind in 1973, they did not live together for any length of time).  In researching this dual biography, Axel Madsen interviewed existentialist Sartre, feminist Beauvoir, and their friends and read all of the couple’s separate works-a total of 9 novels, 10 plays, and some 30 major works of nonfiction, including autobiography.  Madsen traces their remarkable common journey in the mainstream of European philosophy,  journalism, theater, literature, and left-wing politics.  In her first  published novel (L’lnvitee), Beauvoir summed up her feelings about Sartre:”You and I are simply one…neither of us can be explained without the other.  “Of Beauvoir,Sartre has said, “In a way I owe everything to her.

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