Transatlantic Love Affair

In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir met Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Nelson Algren in Chicago, and it was love at first sight. A passionate affair ensued, spanning twenty years and four continents in an era when a transatlantic flight took twenty-four hours and overseas telephone calls were a luxury. A Transatlantic Love Affair collects more than three hundred love letters written in English by de Beauvoir to Algren.

Unique among the prolific correspondence de Beauvoir conducted throu…