A The Times & Sunday Times Literary Nonfiction Book of the Year.«Fascinating... Wonderfully entertaining and absorbing» - Sunday Times.«Gripping... A story well told.» - New York Times Book Review.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2020.

In her book Samuel Beckett: A Biography, Deirdre Bair, a journalist with a recently acquired doctorate, managed to secure access to Nobel laureate author Samuel Beckett. Despite never having written a biography before, this work resulted from seven years of intensive discussions and research. Her impressive discoveries led her to also explore Simone de Beauvoir, whose relationship with Beckett was strained.

In Parisian Lives, Bair draws from her extensive notes, offering unpublished details and memories that were impossible to publish earlier, revealing a new dimension to the legendary thinkers.

Commenting on this experience, Bair discovers that the writing process can vary drastically from biography to biography, something that affects the literature and the outcome of each work.

Pages: 368, Dimensions: 13.1x13.1cm