"""The Useless Mouths"" and Other Literary Writings"

An impressive team of experts introduces the book's 10 pieces and thoroughly annotates them. . . . This book nicely puts the philosopher's work into an expanded context for nonspecialists. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) This engaging volume ... is the result of painstaking research and meticulous translation by a team of international scholars. . . . Essential. --Choice English-speaking readers can now hear the subleties of a Beauvoir clearly engaged in the pursuit of defining the purpose and value of literature in her time. --H-France Review This collection of previously untranslated pieces by Simone de Beauvoir makes available for the first time in English a variety of literary writings that are also of philosophical interest. As with previous volumes in the Beauvoir Series, The Useless Mouths and Other Literary Writings breaks new ground, and it will become indispensible to Beauvoir scholars. --Claudia Card, author of Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide This collection of Beauvoir's literary works not only presents us with further evidence of the importance of Beauvoir's existentialist literary style but also gives new insight into her thinking about aesthetics, existentialism, intersubjectivity, aging, and her relationship with Sartre. In addition, here we see some of her most incisive engagements with her critics and critics of existentialism more generally. --Kelly Oliver, author of Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human