Description: The first complete English-language collection of Simone Weil's letters to her loved ones, A Life in Letters deepens appreciation of one of the twentieth century's great thinkers by offering insight into her relationships, spiritual and occupational experiments, political commitments, restless mobility, and wide-ranging interests.
Brief description: Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist, widely considered one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century.
Review Quotes: Many of these missives are dashed-off notes from camp--a daughter assuaging a mother's anxiety about her welfare, or scolding her for it, or asking for cigarettes and coffee filters, or reporting cheerfully on a tour of Italy, ...or threatening that she 'won 't eat for two weeks' if Mime sends her a care package she hasn't asked for. Yet they humanize Weil the icon by the very fact of their banality, and by their poignant testimony to her umbilical dependence as a child who never really left home.--Judith Thurman "New Yorker" (9/2/2024 12:00:00 AM)