Synopses & Reviews
It seems there is no genre of writing Marie NDiaye will not make her own. Asked to write a memoir, she turned in this paranoid fantasia of rising floodwaters, walking corpses, eerie depictions of her very own parents, and the incessant reappearance of women in green. Just who are these green women? They are powerful (one was NDiayes disciplinarian grade-school teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost and may be visible only to the author). They are seductive (one stole a friends husband). And they are unbearably personal (one is NDiayes own mother). They are all, in their way, aspects of their creator, at once frightening, menacing, and revealing of everything submerged within the consciousness of this singular literary talent. A courageous, strikingly honest, and unabashedly innovative self-portrait, NDiayes kaleidoscopic look at the women in green is a revelation to us all about how we form our identities, how we discover those things we repress, and how our obsessions become us.
Review
Praise for Self-Portrait in Green:Self-Portrait in Green is a sort of malicious reverie where the real mingles with the imagined, the living with the dead, the water with the land.” The Express (Paris)
Praise for the Author -
NDiaye, who received Frances most prestigious literary prize . . . may be that nations most startling new literary voice.” Publishers Weekly, starred review
[NDiaye] is increasinglyand justlyrecognized as a major world writer.” Rain Taxi Review of Books
Synopsis
"Marie NDiaye is so intelligent, so composed, so good, that any description of her work feels like an understatement." --The New York Review of Books
Who are the green women? They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend's father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author's own mother).
They are all aspects of their creator: Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France's leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye's self-portrait forces us all to ask questions--about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.
Synopsis
"One of the most mysterious, spectral, appealing and uncategorizable books I've ever read." --
Amina Cain, author of A Horse at Night
Who are the green women? They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend's father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author's own mother).
They are all aspects of their creator: Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France's leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye's self-portrait forces us all to ask questions--about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.
About the Author
Marie NDiaye met her father for the first time at age 15, two years before publishing her first novel. She is the recipient of the Prix Femina and the Prix Goncourt, the latter being highest honor a French writer can receive. One of ten finalists for the 2013 International Booker Prize, alongside Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson, she is the author of over a dozen plays and works of prose. Jordan Stump is a two-time nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. One of the leading translators of innovative French literature, he has translated books by Nobel laureate Claude Simon, plus Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Eric Chevillard, and Jules Vernes French-language novel The Mysterious Island.