After the death of a friend in a political protest, for which he feels guilty, Jean leaves the Party and concentrates on trade union activities.

The major theme of The Blood of Others is the relation between the free individual and 'the historically unfolding world of brute facts and other men and women.

This, argues David E. Cooper, is an illustration of an existentialist view of the nature of freedom, according to which an individual is just as responsible for not refusing something as for choosing it.

:[7] Hélène's fleeing from Paris as the Germans advanced is based on Beauvoir's own actions - in June 1940 she travelled with friends by car to Laval and then by coach to Angers.

Blomart's reaction to the death of the baby son of his family's maid (chapter 1) is based on Beauvoir's own experience of the same as a young woman.

The story of Madeleine volunteering to help in the Spanish civil War and injuring her foot by spilling hot water over it is based on a similar event that occurred to writer Simone Weil.

[2] One reviewer wrote that Beauvoir had written 'in an economical, sometimes flat style which conceals a remarkably sustained note of suspense and mounting excitement due to the sheer vitality and force of her ideas.

The English translation by Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse was first published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd and Lindsay Drummond in 1948.