Halfway through The Prime of Life, Simone de Beauvoir reflects on the act of autobiography: she writes that she believes still in the theory of the transcendental ego, that the self (moi) has only a probable objectivity, and that anyone saying ‘I’ grasps only its outer edge. An outsider, she suggests, can see more clearly. This personal account is not offered as an explanation, she continues, but as a self-revelation; self-knowledge is impossible.

With this in mind, the movement of the book becomes all the more absorbing: to watch a conscious mind interpret its acts, not by justification, but by observation. The Prime of Life follows de Beauvoir’s literary apprenticeship, her life with Sartre, and the years of Paris’s occupation.

The stimulation lies in reading yourself into the mind of a fiercely intelligent woman attempting to understand an earlier self with unremitting honesty. The ‘I’ who testifies in this autobiography possesses a knowledge denied to the ‘I’ who lived through those events. De Beauvoir places her younger self under the microscope with the rationality that only time allows.

Compared to her early diaries, where the emotional tenor is more immediate, The Prime of Life offers a cooler, more reflective narrative, occasionally drawing from her wartime journals to capture the tenor of the period.

It seems inconceivable that The Prime of Life is out of print in English: it is a superior work to Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, a first-rate autobiography by any measure. I will read the later volumes, though not immediately. The immersion under de Beauvoir’s skin has been all-consuming.