To a certain extent this represents existentialist angst , and to that extent the novel can be seen as both existentialist and philosophical. But any such restricted reading ignores the metaphysical aspects in this novel which impinge upon the definition of the self and the other. The Blood of Others, and they continue into The Mandarins and All Men are Mortal . No doubt it can be countered that it was Sartre's ideas that were developed for they had collaborated for several years by then, and Sartre had read and commented upon the drafts her manuscript. In any case it might be argued that what Beauvoir was later to develop in The Second Sex was a notion of the gendered self.
All Men Are Mortal , transl.
Translated and edited by Quintin Hoare from the French edition edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir.