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Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago

Noon in Paris, Eight in Chicago

Author(s): Douglas Cowie

Location(s): Chicago, Guatemala, Mexico, Paris

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1940s/50s

Location

Content

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.

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Lead Review

Author: tripfiction

Simone de Beauvoir meets Nelson Algren in February 1947 when she rings him up and asks him to show her the ‘real’ Chicago. He takes her on breakneck tour of the seamier side of...

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