‘My relationship with Simone de Beauvoir was unique. It cannot be reproduced. It was love’

As an autobiographical novel by the writer is published for the first time in English, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir - the adopted daughter with whom Simone shared the last 26 years of her life - talks about their bond

Simone de Beauvoir was haunted by the death of her childhood friend Zaza... I think she spent the rest of her life looking for the intimacy they'd had," says Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir. For a long time she didn't succeed, but I believe she found it with me."

For all but the most ardent followers of the 20th-century feminist and author of The Second Sex this statement may come as a surprise. De Beauvoir is most famously linked to fellow writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she enjoyed - and at times endured - a 50-year open relationship.