When Andre joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andre is small for her age but walks with the confidence of an adult. 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. 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. ‘Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls – and the pressures that sunder them’ Spectator TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN – INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY