Recently published for the first time in France, letters written by Simone de Beauvoir to one of the world's most acclaimed philosophers shed light on their relationship and her obsessive need to communicate with him.

    His fresh and beautiful prose translations will re-open many half-forgotten doors, and stimulate new enthusiasms.

    Each of the thematic sections has been thoroughly revised and each now includes graduated use of vocabulary.

    His bizarre work (and eccentric lifestyle) have attracted enthusiastic critical responses from many of his most illustrious contemporaries, and he has been claimed as a precursor by authors associated with the Surrealists, Pataphysicians, Tel Quel, Semioticians, 'Post Structuralists', and the Oulipo. This collection presents for the first time in English four of his most important works: two plays, his final novel, and his most famous long poem. The translations, hardly surprising given their authors, are superb. (back cover copy)