Misunderstanding in Moscow

An unpublished novel in Brazil by Simone de Beauvoir. André and Nicole, two retired university professors feeling the weight of aging, travel to the Soviet Union for the second time in their lives. There, they meet André's daughter from his first marriage, Macha, a determined woman living in the great experiment of 20th-century socialism. Thus begins a series of misunderstandings related to individual and collective issues—lack of communication, the idea of aging, long-term love, the role and identity of women, political expectations, and so on. Misunderstanding in Moscow, which draws on the experiences of Simone de Beauvoir and her husband, Jean-Paul Sartre, on a trip to the Soviet Union, is a moving account of political and emotional disappointments that shed light on the singularity of our existence.