A posthumous novel by French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir will hit U.S. bookshelves next year, the New York Times reports.
The Inseparables, a novel about the friendship between two girls, one of whom dies at 21 of encephalitis, will be published by Ecco in the U.S. next fall. De Beauvoir declined to publish the book, which she wrote in 1954, because it was “too intimate,” the Guardian reports.
De Beauvoir’s daughter and literary executor, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, first read the book in 1986, and said she realized instantly that it should be published eventually.
“Other publishing priorities simply got in the way, which is why I’m just getting to her novels and short stories now,” she said.
De Beauvoir didn’t intend for all of her work to be published. She destroyed many of her manuscripts, but decided to spare The Inseparables.
“She didn’t destroy this one,” Le Bon de Beauvoir told the Times. “About her papers, she told me, ‘You’ll do as you think is right.’”
Vintage, who will publish the book in the U.K., calls the novel “a moving, gripping coming-of-age novel about female friendship and finding one’s own way in the world.”
And Laurence Tâcu, who will publish the book in France, said, “She writes very powerfully about the way young women were prevented from living freely, because their purpose was to be wives and mothers.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
