Quiet Moments in a War

In the companion volume to the acclaimed Witness of my Life, Jean-Paul Sartre reveals his life as a soldier, a German prisoner, and a man of Resistance through letters between himself and his beloved Beaver, Simone de Beauvoir. Quiet Moments in a War tells the story of Jean-Paul Sartre at the peak of his powers and renown through the exchanging of ideas and intimacies with Simone de Beauvoir from 1940 to 1963. In the pages of this book, readers will find details on Sartre’s war and his path to fame with the publication of his major works.

From September 1939 to June 1940, Sartre wrote Beauvoir almost daily as he waited from the frontlines for a German attack. While it was a time of fear and uncertainty, it doubled as a time of great productivity for Sartre as he completed the novel The Age of Reason and sketched out Being and Nothingness.

This collection of the letters between Sartre and Beauvoir completes the extraordinary correspondence of one of modern history’s most celebrated couples while documenting the emergence of a great intellectual figure.