Simone Weil (1909-43), a brilliant student of philosophy and classics, in her short life was a factory worker, farm labourer and teacher, as well as volunteering for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and assisting the Free French in London. Her books include Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots and Waiting for God. Albert Camus described her as 'the only great spirit of our time'; the New York Times as 'one of the most brilliant and original minds of twentieth-century France'; and Susan Sontag wrote in the New York Review of Books that 'anything from Simone Weil's pen is worth reading.' Simon Leys is the author of The Hall of Uselessness, Other People's Thoughts, The Death of Napoleon, The Wreck of the Batavia and Prosper.