They are one of the world's legendary couples. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre - those passionate, free-thinking Existentialist philosopher-writers - had a committed but notoriously open union that generated no end of controversy. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Hazel Rowley portrays them up close: their romantic entanglements, their Parisian cafe society circle, their discussions of each other's work. Theirs is a great story - and a great story is precisely what they most wanted their lives to be.