The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir

The Mandarins (French: Les Mandarins) is a 1954 roman à clef by Simone de Beauvoir, for which she won the Prix Goncourt, awarded to the best and most imaginative prose work of the year, in 1954. The Mandarins was first published in English in 1956 (in a translation by Leonard M. Friedman). The book follows the personal lives of a close-knit group of French intellectuals from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s. The title refers to the scholar-bureaucrats of imperial China. The characters at times see themselves as ineffectual "mandarins" as they attempt to discern what role, if any, intellectuals will have in influencing the political landscape of the world after World War II. As in de Beauvoir's other works, themes of feminism, existentialism, and personal morality are explored as the characters navigate not only the intellectual and political landscape but also their shifting relationships with each other. The British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (in the Sunday Times) described The Mandarins as "a remarkable book, a novel on the grand scale, courageous in its exactitude and endearing because of its persistent seriousness".

The 1059th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (The Book)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
Les Mandarins Tome 1 Paperback 5317499 $31.86
Les mandarins. Paperback 1828308 $24.97 $14.26 1954
The Mandarins Paperback 1507675 $16.84 $6.80 2005
Les Mandarins - 2 volumes (French Edition) Paperback 9868466 $59.95 $23.00 1961
The Mandarins Hardcover 4688465 $53.00
Les\Mandarins Vol. 2 Paperback 20705846 $15.00 1978
Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses Paperback 119685 $6.00 $4.25 2007
Mexico's Mandarins: Crafting a Power Elite for the Twenty-First Century Paperback 255554 $23.15 $3.66 2002
Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa Paperback 678819 $10.92 $4.88 2007
American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays Paperback 777470 $4.99 $4.41 2002
The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 Paperback 1115595 $32.76 $11.03 1990
Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History) Paperback 1261984 $23.51 $18.77 2007
William Empson, Volume I: Among the Mandarins Paperback 1709289 $41.46 $35.41 2009
William Empson: Volume I: Among the Mandarins Hardcover 2109950 $76.74 $46.03 2005
The Mandarins: A novel Hardcover 1829838 $18.00
Our Culture, What's Left Of It Kindle Edition 279044 2010
Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses Hardcover 1019547 $6.00 $3.83 2005
Mexico's Mandarins: Crafting a Power Elite for the Twenty-First Century Kindle Edition 2458629 2002
Mexico's Mandarins: Crafting a Power Elite for the Twenty-First Century Hardcover 9990130 $179.62 $30.00 2002
Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa Kindle Edition 1144753 2011
American Power and the New Mandarins Mass Market Paperback 1494046 $9.13
American Power and the New Mandarins. Hardcover 2655707 $74.17 $17.50
American Power and the New Mandarins Paperback 5816813 $554.12
Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1965: Ministers, Mercenaries and Mandarins: Foreign Policy and the Limits of Covert Action Paperback 1136042 $19.58 $23.92 2010
Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam Hardcover 1549617 $55.79 $36.00 2008
Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History) Kindle Edition 382564 2004
Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History) Hardcover 797230 $176.63 $26.36 2004
Les Mandarins d'Avignon Paperback 1506997 $12.41 $3.84 2006
Les Mandarins Hardcover 5936648 $102.29
Les mandarins tome 1 Mass Market Paperback 15222306 $33.95
Pioneering in Formosa: Recollections of Adventures Among Mandarins, Wreckers,& Head-Hunting Savages (Classic Reprint) Paperback 692561 $13.57 2017
Les mandarins (Tome 1) (French Edition) Kindle Edition 865251 2014
Die Mandarins von Paris (German Edition) Kindle Edition 3012777 2013
The Mandarins (Norton Paperback Fiction) Paperback 157807 $13.96 $4.15 1999
Les Mandarins Vol. 1 (French Edition) Paperback 17410174 $19.95 2017
Les Mandarins : Tome 2 Mass Market Paperback 213186 $11.58 $2.70 1972
Les Mandarins : Tome 1 Mass Market Paperback 830051 $9.00 $3.82 1972
Die Mandarins von Paris. Paperback 3285940 $15.11 $2.49 2000
[The Mandarins (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)] [By: Beauvoir, Simone De] [April, 2005] Paperback 3309716 $28.92 $33.36 2005
Les mandarins (Tome 2) (French Edition) Kindle Edition 1109575 $11.99 2014