The Blood of Others - Simone de Beauvoir - 1948

"This highly successful second novel, published in September 1945, was labelled a Resistance novel, and also an Existentialist novel, though its theme, de Beauvoir argues in her memoirs, was a much more arid philosophical one, namely, ‘the paradox of this existence experienced by me as my freedom and by those who came in contact with me as an object’. But this philosophical intention was either ignored by the public, or, as de Beauvoir herself surmises, was simply not apparent to them. The Blood of Others, dubbed by the American reviewer Richard McLaughlin 'the fictional primer on existentialism we have all been anxiously awaiting', was, for the most part, written during the worst years of the war, throughout 1943 and 1944, and, as Deirdre Bair observes, much of the bleakness and uncertainty of that period pervades its background." An uncommon paperback edition. Published 1948, Alfred A. Knopf. Approx 4.25x7in. 224pp. Softcover. Pages fairly yellowed consistent with pulp paperbacks of this vintage.