SOURCE: "Commitment, Re-Commitment and Puzzlement: Aspects of the Cold War in the Fiction of Simone de Beauvoir," in French Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 22, February, 1997, pp. 127-36.

In the following essay, Keefe discusses Beauvoir's political perspective during the Cold War and attitudes concerning the United States and the U.S.S.R. as reflected in Le sange des autres, Les mandarins, Les belles images, Le femme rompue and "Malentendu à Moscou."

In two novels having a kind of continuity that is not always recognized, Simone de Beauvoir creates fictional worlds that closely mirror major phases and events of two decades of modern French history. But whereas Le Sang des autres reaches back some way before focusing on the build-up to World War Two and the Occupation, a distinctive feature of Les Mandarins is that it treats a very short period of time in considerable depth. Portraying the dilemmas and reactions...