Beloved Chicago Man : Letters To Nelson Algren 1947 - 64, published by Phoenix Giant, 1999, softcover, illustrated, index, 590 pages, condition: as new.

It started with ardour and ended in bitterness, this affair which Simone de Beauvoir described as the only truly passionate love in my life. Documented in more than three hundred letters, her affair with the American writer Nelson Algren introduced her to the physical pleasure she had never found with Jean-Paul Sartre and threatened to destabilise her carefully constructed writers life in Paris. Perhaps that is why, many years later, she repudiated the affair, insisting to a friend that you have to make it clear that I lied in all those letters. Everything was a lie.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (/bovwɑr/; French: [simɔn də bovwa]; 9 January 1908 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

De Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics and social issues. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She is also known for her open relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.