<p><b>When Andr¿joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andr¿is small for her age but walks with the confidence of an adult.</b><br><br>The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But as the girls grow into young women, the pressures of society mount, threatening everything.<br><br>This novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir''s lifetime. It tells the story of the real-life friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the twentieth century.<br><br><b>''Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls - and the pressures that sunder them'' <i>Spectator</i></b><br><br><b>VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - five masterpieces of French fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.</b><br><br><b>TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN - INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY</b></p>