Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of the founding texts of modern feminism and one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It covers everything from ancient myth to modern psychoanalysis to ask what the relations between men and women have in common with other kinds of oppression, from slavery to colonialism. It also offers some radical suggestions for how both women and men can be liberated from their condition.

Recommended version to buy

Going Deeper:

• Madeline Gobeil, ‘Simone de Beauvoir, The Art of Fiction No. 35,’ The Paris Review (1965)
• Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (2016) 
• Kate Kirkpatrick, Becoming Beauvoir (2019)
•  [Audio]: Simone de Beauvoir, In Our Time 

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