Recommendations
Books Like The Mandarins
Best books to read after The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Readers who love The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir are drawn to its combination of the great postwar roman à clef, the love affair between Anne and Lewis that transects continents, and the investigation of what political commitment means for the intellectual left after the Liberation — they want novels that deal with the postwar Parisian world, the relationship between intellectual and political life, and the tradition of the Prix Goncourt novel.
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She Came to Stay
by Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir's companion first novel — Françoise, Pierre, and Xavière. The companion investigation of the existentialist subject in the prewar period: where She Came to Stay is about the philosophical problem of the Other in personal relationships, The Mandarins is about the same problem in the political world
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The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir's companion philosophical masterwork. The companion investigation of the same subject from the philosophical angle: The Mandarins is the lived experience that The Second Sex analyzes; Anne Dubreuilh navigates the constraints that The Second Sex identifies and names
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Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's companion novel — Roquentin's discovery of contingency. The companion investigation of the intellectual in his solitude: where Sartre's Roquentin is alone with his nausea, Beauvoir's Anne and Robert are embedded in a world of political commitment and personal relationship
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The Fall
by Albert Camus
Camus's companion novel — Jean-Baptiste Clamence in Amsterdam. The companion investigation of the same postwar intellectual climate from the other side of the Sartre-Camus quarrel: The Fall is Camus's own processing of the same rupture that The Mandarins dramatizes
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The Rebel
by Albert Camus
Camus's companion essay on revolt and history. The companion philosophical text: The Rebel precipitated the public quarrel between Sartre and Camus, and The Mandarins dramatizes the human consequences of that quarrel between the figures based on them
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Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
by Simone de Beauvoir
Beauvoir's companion autobiography. The companion as autobiographical context: the memoir tells the story of the years that preceded The Mandarins, showing how Beauvoir transforms life into fiction
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
Kundera's companion novel about intellectuals, love, and political commitment in Czechoslovakia. The companion investigation of the same question that organizes The Mandarins: what is the relationship between the intellectual's personal life and their political commitments?
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The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
Mann's companion novel about ideas and the approaching catastrophe. The companion investigation of the relationship between intellectual life and the historical situation: both are novels organized around the encounter between the world of ideas and the world of history, and both are organized around the discovery that the ideas cannot survive unmodified
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