PRIVATE PROPERTY
Paule Constant
Translated from the French by Margot Miller and France Grenaudier-Klijn
When Tiffany Murano's parents, French expatriates in Africa, send her to a Catholic boarding school in France, her homeland feels nothing like home. In leaving colonial Africa, she loses the natural world, the people, and the animals she knows and loves. Behind the walls of the Convent of the Slaughterhouse Ladies, Tiffany, whom readers met in Paule Constant's award-winning first novel, Ouregano, leads a life cut off from the world, a life of immutable and ironically secular ritual. She finds solace only in visits to her grandmother's nearby farm, which becomes a sanctuary, paradisial in its isolation. But it is only a matter of time before this magical world is threatened.Based loosely on Constant's own experiences, Private Property is at once deeply moving and intellectually exacting, an exploration of identity, home, and the tenuous relationship between mothers and daughters.
Paule Constant teaches French literature at the University of Aix-Marseilles and is the author of several novels, including Trading Secrets, winner of the Prix Goncourt; White Spirit; and The Governor's Daughter, all available in Bison Books editions.
University of Nebraska/Bison Books, paperback, 9780803234802 (October)
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THE WINE OF SOLITUDE
Irene Nemirovsky
Translated from the French by Sandra Smith
Introspective, intense and poignant, The Wine of Solitude is the most autobiographical of all Irene Nemirovsky's novels, now available in English for the first time. Imbued with melancholy, and regret, it explores the troubled relationship between a young girl, her distant, self-absorbed mother and her mother's lover, Max. We follow the family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Helene grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into an angry young woman. Through hot summers in a fictionalised Kiev (Nemirovsky's own birthplace) and the cruel winters of St Petersburg, the would-be writer Helene blossoms, despite her mother's neglect, into a clear-eyed observer of the life around her. The Wine of Solitude is a powerful tale, telling less of the end of innocence, than of disillusionment; the story of an upbringing that produces a young woman as hard as a diamond, prepared to wreak a shattering revenge on her mother.
Irene Nemirovksy was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became a bestselling novelist, author of David Golder, Le Bal and other works published in her lifetime, as well as the posthumous Suite Francaise. The Wine of Solitude (Le Vin de Solitude) was first published in France in 1935. Prevented from publishing when the Germans occupied France in 1940, she stayed with her husband and two small daughters in the small village of Issy-l'Eveque (in German occupied territory). In July 1942 she was arrested by the French police and interned in Pithiviers concentration camp, and from there immediately deported to Auschwitz where she died in August 1942.
Chatto & Windus, 9780701185572 (October)
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WOMEN'S WRITING FROM THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1200 - 1875
Edited by Lia Van Gemert, et al.
This landmark bilingual Dutch-English anthology introduces women's writing in the Low Countries, the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, from 1200 to 1875. The Dutch and Flemish writers featured here produced work of ardent religious passion, ranging from medieval mysticism to scathing anti-Reformation polemic to pious Anabaptist reflections. Others addressed current social and political debates or demonstrated fierce feminist engagement. This survey includes a range of genres, from sonnets to social and epistolary novels, and will serve as a unique resource for the study of women's writing throughout the ages as well as an unparalleled portrait of the emotional, social, and political worlds of female writers in the Low Countries.
University of Chicago/Amsterdam University Press, paperback, 9789089641298
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WOMEN'S WRITING FROM THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1880 - 2010
Edited by Jacqueline Bel and Thomas Vaessens
This unique anthology offers English-speaking readers a chance to become acquainted with the leading Dutch and Flemish women writers since the 1880s. Covering a representative range of public and private genres, from poetry, critical essays, travel literature, and political commentary to diaries and journals, the fifty-six texts featured are arranged chronologically and accompanied by brief introductions, chronologies, and guides to the authors and their work. The wealth of information collected in this volume will heighten readers' understanding of both the modern European literary canon and the long march of feminist history and literature.
University of Chicago/Amsterdam University Press, paperback, 9789089641939
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AN ACCIDENT IN AUGUST
Laurence Cossé
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
In An Accident in August, Laurence Cossé takes one of the most famous news events of recent world history as the starting point for a novel as intelligent as it is gripping. On the now infamous night of August 31, 1997, a young woman's life is thrown into turmoil when fortune places her at the scene of the fatal car crash in which Lady Diana Frances Spencer, then Princess of Wales, lost her life. Scared and alone, she flees the scene of the accident. While there are no immediate repercussions resulting from her flight, as news of the tragic event spreads and TV stations, papers and radio talk of nothing else for days, she is assailed by a growing sense of guilt. Terrified of being found out, questioned, arrested, and thrown headfirst into a media whirlwind, she finds herself paralyzed by fear, paranoia, and a growing sense of remorse.
Wonderfully paced, suspenseful and dramatic, An Accident in August is the story of an ordinary person radically changed by her chance involvement in an extraordinary event. She unwittingly becomes a part of history. Yet history itself, not to mention the police and the media, ultimately fails to identify her, and she remains a figure cloaked in mystery.
Laurence Cossé worked as a journalist before devoting herself entirely to fiction. She lives in France.
Europa Editions, paperback, 9781609450496
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WRITING
Marguerite Duras
Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti
Writing, one of Marguerite Duras's last works, is a meditation on writing and her need for solitude in order to write. In the five short pieces collected here, she explores experiences that had an emotional impact on her and inspired her to write. Both autobiographical and fictional, Writing displays Duras's unique worldview and sensitive insight in her simple, poetic prose.
Univ. of Minnesota Press, paperback, 9780816677535
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TAKE THIS MAN
Alice Zeniter
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Alice is about to marry Mad. Alice is white. Mad is black. Alice is French; Mad, though he has studied and lived in France for years, is not. They have been friends since childhood and never been romantically involved. But now Mad is being threatened with deportation and marrying Alice strikes both friends as the best solution to their problems. On the eve of her wedding, Alice reflects on their years of friendship—from their childhood together to the first time she ever heard racial slurs being directed at her friend to the victory of Jean Marie Le Pen in the presidential primaries in 2002. This succession of personal anecdotes forms a grand history of racism and a moving portrait of contemporary youth. Recounting stories of rebellion and friendship, of the passage from indignant adolescent to consciously engaged adult, Take This Man is a delightful and original novel by a talented young author.
Alice Zeniter published her first novel at the age of sixteen. She is now twenty-two and considered to be one of the most compelling voices of a new generation of French authors. She lives in Paris.
Europa Editions, paperback, 9781609450533
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