Celebrating the life and work of Simone Weil
Simone Weil (03/02/1909 - 24/08/1943) was a philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist and political activist. 75 years after her death, the Book Office celebrates her life and work.
Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. One of the first female gradutates of the École Normale Supérieure and a socialist, she worked for a time on the Renault assembly line and volunteered to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. In 1938, a mystical vision led Weil to convert to Roman Catholicism, though she refused the sacrament of baptism. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. She died in 1943 and is now buried in Ashford (Kent).
Most of her works, published posthumously, consist of some notebooks and a collection of religious essays. Some of them are available in English:
Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (Routledge, 2001)
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (Routledge, 2002)
Simone Weil, Letter to a Priest (Routledge, 2002)
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (Routledge, 2003)
Rachel Bespaloff and Simone Weil. War and the Iliad, translated by Mary McCarthy (New York Review of Books, 2005)
Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology, edited by Sian Miles (Penguin Classics, 2005)
Simone Weil, Waiting for God (Harper Collins Publishing)
Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties, translated by Simon Leys (New York Review of Books, 2014)
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