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Trois femmes puissantes

by Marie N Diaye &

 
Trois femmes puissantes [Three Strong Women] is the book beneath the French media’s spotlight this rentrée. Three, tenuously linked narratives. At their heart, three women who say no. Forty year-old Norah arrives at the home of her father in Africa. An egocentric tyrant, he has now become silent and bulimic, and spends his nights perched in a tree in the courtyard. Why did he ask her to come? The answer, Norah discovers, is worse than she could have ever imagined. Fanta, who used to teach French in Dakar, had to follow her partner, Rudy, to France. Here, Rudy proves incapable of providing her with the rich and joyful life she deserves. He remains under the morbid influence of his mother, who dedicates her life to convincing her entourage of the existence of angels. Destabilised, Rudy wanders through an angry reality, while Fanta, by his side, is a rock. Khady Demba is a young African widow. Penniless, she tries to find her distant cousin, Fanta, in France. The long journey of emigration she pursues will be punctuated with unspeakable suffering.
   
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Biography

Marie N Diaye : Marie N Diaye was born on June 4, 1967 in Pithiviers, France, the daughter of a French mother and a Senegalese father. She is the sister of Pap N Diaye, historian and lecturer at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and wife of the author Yves Cendrey, with whom she wrote a series of three plays entitled Puzzle, in 2007. Marie N Diaye studied linguistics at the Sorbonne and won a French Academy scholarship for a residence at the Villa Medici in Rome. She began writing at 12 years old and published her first work, Quant au riche avenir [As for the Promising Future] at the age of 17. She received literary acclaim with En famille [A Family Affair]. She also writes novels for children and is a playwright.<br /> Her play Providence was staged at the International French-Language Theater in Paris and her play Papa doit manger [Daddy has to Eat] is only the second play by a female writer to be taken into the repertoire of the Comédie française.

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Publisher Gallimard
Published 2009
ISBN 978-2070786541
Pages 316
Price 19 Euros
 
 
Foreign Rights
Contact Anne-Solange Noble
Address 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin 75007 Paris
Telephone 00 33 1 49 54 43 56
Fax 00 33 1 49 54 14 90
Email anne-solange.noble@gallimard.fr
   
 
  Copyright FBN 2010