At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Others
Sarah Bakewell in conversation with Dr. Mark Calkins

Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher excited about a new conceptual framework called Phenomenology. Interweaving biography and philosophy, author Sarah Bakewell offers an epic account of passionate encounters—fights, love affairs, mentorships, and long partnerships—and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today.

Sarah Bakewell is author of How to Live or A Life of Montaigne, The Smart, and The English Dane. She was born in Bournemouth, but spent most of her childhood in Sydney, Australia, after several years travelling the hippy trail through Asia with her parents. She studied philosophy at the University of Essex and worked as a curator of early printed books at London's Wellcome Library for ten years before devoting herself to full-time writing. She lives in London, where she teaches creative writing at City University, London, and for the Open University.

Mark Calkins, PH.D., is on the Lecturer Faculty in the Department of Comparative and World Literature, College of Liberal and Creative Arts, San Francisco State University. He has been the moderator of Mechanics’ Institute’s dedicated Proust Group for over 10 years.