Location

Presentation of the New Translation with Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Translators
In English with some French

The first unabridged and complete English language edition since it was published in French in 1949. American and English-speaking readers will finally discover Simone de Beauvoir’s original thoughts on what it means to be a woman.
Both translators have been living in Paris for many years and taught at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques.
Followed by a reception.

The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe, June 1949) is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature.

The Second Sex was de Beauvoir's exhaustive effort to grapple with the strange predicaments that being a woman creates for a human being. The dilemmas she analyzed continue to obsess and sometimes torment modern women -- the conflicts between meaningful work and maternity, the temptations of dependence, the painful artifices conventional femininity requires. Her work anticipates both second wave feminism and the reaction to it. "[T]he independent woman today is divided between her professional interests and the concerns of her sexual vocation; she has trouble finding her balance; if she does, it is at the price of concessions, sacrifices and juggling that keep her in constant tension," she wrote, words that are no less true all these decades later.

Copies of The Second Sex can be purchased through Politics & Prose bookstore.
The Alliance Française cannot guarantee that books will be available for purchase at the event. It is therefore advised that attendees purchase their copies in advance.