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The Image of Her
  • Published: 6 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781784879907
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

The Image of Her

Formats & editions
Hardback
6 May 2025
EBook
1 May 2025
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A compelling novel about the requirement to be perfect, without losing sight of yourself - by the greatest feminist of the twentieth-century, Simone de Beauvoir.

Laurence is a woman who appears to live an ideal life.

Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – her life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind unbidden writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office.

But Laurence is a woman whose experience of life has always been overwritten by the expectation of perfection. It is only when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world that Laurence begins to act, finally grappling with a life that prizes image over truth.

TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN
  • Published: 6 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781784879907
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

About the author

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycées at Marseille and Rouen from 1931-1937, and in Paris from 1938-1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on Les Temps Mordernes. The author of several books including The Mandarins (1957) which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, de Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986.
SdB

Also by Simone de Beauvoir

The Inseparables
The Second Sex (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)
America Day by Day
The Blood of Others
The Prime of Life
Misunderstanding in Moscow
What Is Existentialism?
See all

Praise for The Image of Her

This timeless and surprisingly jocular novel has the same richness of feeling and continental sophistication as Annie Ernaux’s auto-fiction, plus a dash of the wealthy carelessness found in F Scott Fitzgerald’s best known works… It’s the best book I’ve read so far this year

The Times

Only the best books can connect you to the past in the way this one does… And de Beauvoir’s writing takes your breath away

Country & Town House, *Christmas Gift Guide 2025*