La Batarde: (The Bastard) (French Literature) (French Literature Series) - Softcover

Violette Leduc; Derek Coltman; Simone De Beauvoir; Deborah Levy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782891 ISBN 13: 9781564782892

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2009

Synopsis

An obsessive and revealing self-portrait of a remarkable woman humiliated by the circumstances of her birth and by her physical appearance, La Batarde relates Violette Leduc s long search for her own identity through a series of agonizing and passionate love affairs with both men and women. When first published, La Batarde earned Violette Leduc comparisons to Jean Genet for the frank depiction of her sexual escapades and immoral behavior. A confession that contains portraits of several famous French authors, this book is more than just a scintillating memoir like that of Henry Miller, Leduc s brilliant writing style and attention to language transform this autobiography into a work of art."

About this title

Review:

"Notoriety aside, Leduc is first and foremost a first-rate writer. Not someone who just tells a provocative story and is unafraid to reveal the most offensive parts of her personality and of her experience, but someone who is in love with words, struggles with them, wrestles with language, dies for adjectives, is tortured by her search for le mot juste."

"Whoever speaks to us from the depths of his loneliness speaks to us of ourselves. In La Batarde, a woman is descending into the most secret part of herself and telling us about all she finds there with an unflinching sincerity, as though there were no one listening."

"La Batarde is one of the most extraordinary books to have come out of France in some time."

"La Batarde is one of the most extraordinry books to have come out of France in some time."--Kirkus Reviews

Whoever speaks to us from the depths of his loneliness speaks to us of ourselves. In "La B?tarde," a woman is descending into the most secret part of herself and telling us about all she finds there with an unflinching sincerity, as though there were no one listening.--Simone de Beauvoir

About the Author:

The illigitimate daughter of a servant girl, Violette Leduc started writing at the urging of Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir. Her first novel ("In the Prison of Her Skin") was published by Albert Camus for ?ditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet. She went on to write eight more books, including "Ravages," "L'Affam?e," and "Mad in Pursuit," the second part of her literary autobiography.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1564782891
• ISBN 13: 9781564782892
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488