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At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

by SarahBakewell (Author), Sarah Bakewell (Author)

  • New

    paperback

    $14.19
Synopsis

Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize Paris, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking... `It's not often that you miss your bus stop because you're so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that... The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn't win awards, I will eat my copy' Independent on Sunday `Bakewell shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists' ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy... Tender, incisive and fair' Daily Telegraph `Quirky, funny, clear and passionate... Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand' Mail on Sunday

$14.19

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: paperback
 Publisher: Vintage
Published:
ISBN 10: 0099554887
ISBN 13: 9780099554882
Book Overview: From the bestselling author of How to Live, an enthralling and original new book about a group of young thinkers, the birth of existentialism and some of the biggest questions of all

Media Reviews
It's not often that you miss your bus stop because you're so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that while immersed in Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Cafe. The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn't win awards, I will eat my proof copy -- Katy Guest * The Independent on Sunday *
My book of the year is Sarah Bakewell's At The Existentialist Cafe, a marvellously rich and evocative journey through one of the most powerful philosophical movements of the twentieth century... This graceful book speaks to our parochial and inward-looking age. -- Sudhir Hazareesingh * Times Literary Supplement, Book of the Year *
A wonderfully readable combination of biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection. -- John Walsh * Independent *
At the Existentialist Cafe takes us back to...when philosophers and philosophy itself were sexy, glamorous, outrageous; when sensuality and erudition were entwined... [Bakewell] shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists' ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy... Tender, incisive and fair. -- Jane O'Grady * Daily Telegraph *
Quirky, funny, clear and passionate...Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
Author Bio
Sarah Bakewell was a teenage existentialist, having been swept off her feet by reading Sartre's Nausea, aged 16. She is the author of three biographies, including the bestselling How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, which won the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction and the National Books Critics Circle Award for Biography in the US, and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award.