Simone De Beauvoir – All Men Are Mortal

She’s more famous for her personal life than for her literary activity and when her works are mentioned, it’s always the feminism impregnated ones. But apparently she wrote other kinds of things as well. All Men Are Mortal is sort of a classic novel in my opinion. A book to be read when you’re a restless teenager of even later on, like for instance when you’re preparing for an exam and you are craving for an entertaining novel rather than a bunch of boring school books. It is a dissertation about life and death, or more precisely about the meaning of life and the dimension of eternity.

It can be seen with the naked eye that Simone has something from her beloved Jean Paul (Sartre). After all, she is believed to have been reading his volumes before they were sent further for publishing. Plus, she’s got verve.

The high interest and cultivated background in philosophy provided her the fertile ground for tackling a subject of this nature. And there’s plenty of fictional history inside, epic narrative sequences and colorful dialogues. As a mere plot spoiler, the main characters are a young actress and an immortal man whose voyage through time left him with countless memories to tell and plenty of reflective thoughts to share. So we are faced with an existentialist array of ideas, not novel ones at all, but none the less the book wraps up into a nicely told story.