Sharp and intimate, Douglas Cowie's reimagining of the turbulent love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren asks what it means to love and be loved by the right person at the wrong time. Sharp and intimate, Douglas Cowie's reimagining of the turbulent love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren asks what it means to love and be loved by the right person at the wrong time.
Chicago, 1947: on a freezing February night, France's feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades.
Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating months spent together in Paris and Chicago. But in between are long, anguished periods apart filled with competing desires ? lovers old and new, writing, politics, gambling ? which ultimately expose the fragility of their unconventional 'marriage' and put their devotion to the test.
Chicago, 1947: on a freezing February night, France's feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades. Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating months spent together in Paris and Chicago. But in between are long, anguished periods apart filled with competing desires — lovers old and new, writing, politics, gambling — which ultimately expose the fragility of their unconventional 'marriage' and put their devotion to the test.
"This intoxicating portrayal of raw animal—magnetism is a reimagining of the love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren. It is vividly atmospheric - the literary equivalent of stepping into a Hopper painting. I was walking those 1947 Chicago streets with them." — The Pool
Douglas Cowie is originally from Chicago and has lived in England and Berlin since 1999. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is also the author of Owen Noone and the Marauder and two linked novellas, Sing for Life: Tin Pan Alley and Sing for Life: Away, You Rolling River.
— Based on life and love of Chicago cult author Nelson Algren
— Author is from Chicago"
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