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Author: Lydia Syson
Genres: Literary Fiction
It portrays the intertwined lives of all three during the years immediately before the older couple — charismatic, established, ambitious — found fame. Not long after she escaped this complicated, overwhelming, thrilling but destructive arrangement, Olga Kosakiewicz was fictionalised by Beauvoir as the disruptive, crazed and needy third of a tortured ménage-a-trois in her first published novel, L'Invitée (1943), translated as She Came to Stay. Versions of Olga, a compelling, confused and unpredictable young woman, appear in Sartre's novels too, muddled up with her younger sister Wanda, who later became Sartre's lover. Building on recent, less censorious reassessments of the feminist and philosopher as a pioneer of personal authenticity, fluid sexuality and open, unorthodo relationships, OLGA AND CASTOR combines fact, fiction and philosophy to illuminate the importance of Beauvoir’s early thinking to the way we love and live now. Whether a family is forged by blood or existentialist experiment, can we ever be free of its peculiar torments? I believe there is mass readership, perhaps especially of young women, whose curiosity can easily be coaxed to understand Beauvoir’s formation fully and fairly. For example, the very best way to understand how she went from indifference about ‘women’s issues’ to becoming the passionate driver of the 1970s ‘women’s right to choose’ campaign is to learn about the horrific backstreet abortion to had to organise for her longtime lover and friend Olga.
Author: Lydia Syson
Genres: Literary Fiction
It portrays the intertwined lives of all three during the years immediately before the older couple — charismatic, established, ambitious — found fame. Not long after she escaped this complicated, overwhelming, thrilling but destructive arrangement, Olga Kosakiewicz was fictionalised by Beauvoir as the disruptive, crazed and needy third of a tortured ménage-a-trois in her first published novel, L'Invitée (1943), translated as She Came to Stay. Versions of Olga, a compelling, confused and unpredictable young woman, appear in Sartre's novels too, muddled up with her younger sister Wanda, who later became Sartre's lover. Building on recent, less censorious reassessments of the feminist and philosopher as a pioneer of personal authenticity, fluid sexuality and open, unorthodo relationships, OLGA AND CASTOR combines fact, fiction and philosophy to illuminate the importance of Beauvoir’s early thinking to the way we love and live now. Whether a family is forged by blood or existentialist experiment, can we ever be free of its peculiar torments? I believe there is mass readership, perhaps especially of young women, whose curiosity can easily be coaxed to understand Beauvoir’s formation fully and fairly. For example, the very best way to understand how she went from indifference about ‘women’s issues’ to becoming the passionate driver of the 1970s ‘women’s right to choose’ campaign is to learn about the horrific backstreet abortion to had to organise for her longtime lover and friend Olga.
