The unpublished 'The inseparables', the highly anticipated autobiographical novel by Simone de Beauvoir, will be in Italian bookstores on 22 October.
Published in Italy by Ponte alle Grazie, in the translation by Isabella Mattazzi, with the afterword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, 'The inseparables' (euro 15) is the fictionalized tale of the extraordinary friendship between Simone de Beauvoir and Zaza (Élisabeth) Lacoin, from their meeting at school in the midst of World War I to Zaza's death in 1929.
The narrator Sylvie / Simone is immediately seduced by Andrée / Zaza, an intelligent and rebellious child: the two will become inseparable, despite the hostility of Andrée's family, an ultra-Catholic clan with very rigid traditions.
But if the friendship manages to survive the oppressive environment in which Andrée is forced, the same will not be true for the girl, crushed by the cancellation of the individuality that is required of her.
Thus the moving story of a friendship is also a denunciation of a bigoted and hypocritical society, unable to accept what escapes its narrow pettiness.
Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Inseparables in 1954 and, despite having decided not to publish it, he kept the manuscript.
Today, finally found, these 200 pages are a great literary discovery: although Sylvie / Simone tends in the story to cancel herself out in her friend, her divergent path clearly emerges, which will allow her not only to save herself, but also to become a fundamental figure in the history of women's emancipation in the twentieth century.
'Le inseparabili' can be booked on the online stores and will be discussed at the inQuiete Festival in Rome, on 24 October, with Valeria Parrella and Maria Serena Sapegno.