Reading Order
Les Mandarins Reading Order
Les Mandarins (The Mandarins, 1954) by Simone de Beauvoir won the Prix Goncourt and is the most important French novel of the postwar intellectual world — a roman à clef of the Paris existentialist circle (Sartre appears as Henri, Nelson Algren as Lewis, the protagonist Anne is Beauvoir herself) in the years immediately after the Liberation, when the question of how intellectuals should engage with politics — particularly with the Soviet Union — was the central question of French intellectual life. The novel follows two main strands: Henri Perron, a writer and editor who tries to maintain the independence of his left-wing newspaper while being pressured by the Communist Party, and Anne Dubreuilh, a psychoanalyst whose affair with an American writer (clearly Algren) provides the novel's most directly personal material. Les Mandarins is simultaneously a love novel, a political novel, and a philosophical novel — Beauvoir's attempt to show how existentialist values (authenticity, freedom, engagement) are tested by actual political circumstances.
Where to start
Read Le Deuxième Sexe before Les Mandarins to understand the philosophical framework. Les Mandarins is long (over 700 pages) and can be read in sections; the Henri and Anne strands alternate and can be followed separately though they are most powerful in the full interweaving. The Prix Goncourt recognition means it was designed for sustained literary reading rather than quick absorption.
Complete Les Mandarins Book List
- 1Buy
Les Mandarins
Simone de Beauvoir·1954·Start here — the Prix Goncourt novel; the postwar Paris intellectual world; read at a sustained pace - 2Buy
Le Deuxième Sexe
Simone de Beauvoir·1949·The theoretical foundation — read first for the philosophical context; Les Mandarins dramatizes the same existentialist framework - 3Buy
La Force des choses
Simone de Beauvoir·1963·The third volume of autobiography — the years covered by Les Mandarins, giving the autobiographical account of the same events the novel fictionalizes - 4Buy
La Force de l'âge
Simone de Beauvoir·1960·The second volume of autobiography — the war years that precede the action of Les Mandarins; essential context - 5Buy
Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée
Simone de Beauvoir·1958·Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter — Beauvoir's own formation; the first autobiography; read for the personal complement to the intellectual world of Les Mandarins
Les Mandarins — Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the real people behind the characters in Les Mandarins?
Beauvoir acknowledged the autobiographical basis but insisted that the characters were not simple portraits. The correspondences most widely accepted are: Henri Perron = Albert Camus (the founder of the wartime resistance newspaper Combat who maintained his independence from the Communist Party); Robert Dubreuilh = Jean-Paul Sartre; Anne Dubreuilh = Beauvoir herself; Lewis Brogan = Nelson Algren (the American writer with whom Beauvoir had a decade-long transatlantic love affair). The political debates in the novel closely follow the actual debates of the French left in 1944–1947, particularly over the question of how to respond to evidence of Stalin's labor camps.
What is the political question at the center of Les Mandarins?
The central political question is what French intellectuals on the left should do about the Soviet Union — specifically about the growing evidence of Stalinist repression, the labor camps (Gulag), and the gap between socialist ideals and Soviet reality. Henri Perron's newspaper refuses to suppress this evidence, which puts him in conflict with the Communist Party and with the logic (widespread on the French left) that revealing Soviet crimes would damage the international communist cause and benefit American imperialism. The novel dramatizes without resolving the question of whether political solidarity can justify the suppression of truth.
What is the affair with Lewis and why is it central?
Anne Dubreuilh's affair with the American writer Lewis Brogan (based on Beauvoir's real affair with Nelson Algren) provides the novel's most directly personal material and its central exploration of how a woman who has chosen an intellectual life and a committed relationship with Sartre/Robert navigates an unexpected romantic love. The affair raises the existentialist question of what freedom in love means — Anne cannot simply follow Lewis to America, cannot abandon her life and work in Paris, but cannot end the love. The affair's impossibility gives the novel its most sustained examination of how existentialist freedom plays out in actual emotional life.
Why did the novel win the Prix Goncourt?
Les Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt in 1954 over significant competition (including works by Marguerite Yourcenar and Michel Butor). The jury recognized its scale — it is one of the most ambitious French novels of the postwar period — its literary quality, and its willingness to address directly the political and intellectual questions of the moment. Beauvoir was the second woman to win the Goncourt (after Elsa Triolet in 1944) and the prize gave Les Mandarins an immediate readership across France. Some critics objected that the roman à clef element made it less a novel than a document; the subsequent decades have confirmed its status as a genuine literary achievement rather than simply a roman à clef.
How does Les Mandarins relate to Les Mots and La Nausée?
All three books — Beauvoir's Les Mandarins and Sartre's Les Mots and La Nausée — are examinations of the intellectual vocation from inside. La Nausée (1938) shows the existentialist discovery that intellectual projects cannot give existence meaning; Les Mandarins (1954) shows the existentialist project tested by postwar political reality; Les Mots (1964) shows the late Sartrean self-criticism of the literary vocation. Reading all three together gives the arc of the Beauvoir-Sartre intellectual couple's engagement with the question of what intellectuals are for.
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