In her 1963 memoir, “Force of Circumstance,” Simone de Beauvoir made a fleeting and tantalizing reference to a work of fiction she had abandoned. She described her attempt to write a story centered on her best friend Zaza, who died young of viral encephalitis. In the decades since, literary scholars have wondered what became of the manuscript. Now the book, “The Inseparables,” is finally being published, after Beauvoir’s adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, decided to start releasing the works of fiction from the archive she inherited. The 176-page novel, which is being released in France in the fall of 2020 and in the United States the following year, illuminates a formative chapter of Beauvoir’s early life, and a pivotal relationship that shaped her views on gender inequality and sexism. From: nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/coming-soon-new-fiction-from-simone-de-beauvoir.html