Marie NDiaye – författare

In a small, sleepy town, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own.'NDiaye at her most dazzling' Katie Kitamura'This is NDiaye at her disquieting best' New York MagazineLucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mum was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie's own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes - but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details - a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.Lucie's own children are initiated into their family's peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you - can you? - build a nest that no one wants to fly?

Vinnare av Goncourt-priset 2009!

Juristen Norah reser från sitt hem i Paris för att återförenas med sin egocentriske och maktfullkomlige far i Senegal men möts av en nedbruten man som desperat behöver hennes hjälp. 

Fanta lämnar Dakar och sitt jobb som lärare och flyttar med sin son och man till Frankrike efter att maken blivit avstängd från sitt arbete. 

Den unga änkan Khady har efter sin mans död helt slutit sig inom sig själv, och då familjen avvisar henne påbörjar hon en lång och plågsam resa över havet för att ta sig till Europa.

På olika sätt kämpar de tre kvinnorna för att behålla sin värdighet och tillsammans utgör deras öden en berättelse om maktförhållandena mellan individ och samhälle, man och kvinna, Europa och Afrika som får läsaren att fundera över sin egen plats i världen och tillvaron.

Marie NDiaye är en av den franska samtidslitteraturens mest lyskraftiga namn och Tre starka kvinnor är hennes stora internationella genombrott.

When pregnant Rosie Carpe, her fatherless five-year-old son in tow, arrives in Guadeloupe looking for her elusive brother, Lazare, the world already seems a plenty confusing place. Could the man who comes to meet her, an elegant black man calling himself Lagrand, actually be her disheveled white brother? Are her parents, who abandoned her in Paris, rediscovering themselves in an outrageous second youth of outlandish affairs, or have they simply lost their minds? And does Rosie have a hope of slipping the sticky grasp of her former employer and seducer, who moonlights as a video pornographer? If it seems unlikely that the feckless Lazare, missing for five years as he followed his own twisted path, might help, or that carnivalesque Guadeloupe, where murder and mayhem are the natural outcomes of “business ventures,” might be the place for Rosie to find peace, then Marie NDiaye may have a few surprises in store for her reader. Amid the blurring boundaries and shifting values, the indistinct realities and confusing certainties of Rosie Carpe, a love story unfolds, and all that is ambiguous and tenuous–in short, all of Rosie’s world–is underpinned with a measure of tenderness.

When pregnant Rosie Carpe, her fatherless five-year-old son in tow, arrives in Guadeloupe looking for her elusive brother, Lazare, the world already seems a plenty confusing place. Could the man who comes to meet her, an elegant black man calling himself Lagrand, actually be her disheveled white brother? Are her parents, who abandoned her in Paris, rediscovering themselves in an outrageous second youth of outlandish affairs, or have they simply lost their minds? And does Rosie have a hope of slipping the sticky grasp of her former employer and seducer, who moonlights as a video pornographer? If it seems unlikely that the feckless Lazare, missing for five years as he followed his own twisted path, might help, or that carnivalesque Guadeloupe, where murder and mayhem are the natural outcomes of “business ventures,” might be the place for Rosie to find peace, then Marie NDiaye may have a few surprises in store for her reader. Amid the blurring boundaries and shifting values, the indistinct realities and confusing certainties of Rosie Carpe, a love story unfolds, and all that is ambiguous and tenuous–in short, all of Rosie’s world–is underpinned with a measure of tenderness.

Three women who almost had it all...Norah thinks she has made it when she qualifies as a lawyer in Paris; Fanta works her way into a prestigious teaching job in her home city; Khady runs a cafe with her loving husband - now all she wants is a child. But family ties, broken or reasserted, will force each woman to face a journey from France to Africa or from Africa to France that will take the future out of their hands and change their lives forever. Domineering fathers, weak lovers, the perilous road of the refugee - they will need all their courage and inner strength if they are to overcome. From Man Booker International Prize finalist, Marie NDiaye.

"Marie NDiaye is so intelligent, so composed, so good, that any description of her work feels like an understatement" - Madeleine Schwartz, New York Review of Books"Rich, meandering . . . NDiaye excels at luscious, forensic descriptions of the ritualistic preparation of food" - Catherine Taylor, Mail on SundayThe Cheffe is born into an impoverished family in Sainte-Bazeille in south-western France, but when she takes a job working in the kitchen of a couple in the Landes region, it does not take long before it becomes clear that the Cheffe has an unusual, remarkable talent for cooking. She dreams in recipes, she's always imagining new food combinations, she hunts down elusive flavours and aromas, and she soon usurps the couple's cook.But for all her genius, the Cheffe remains very secretive about the rest of her life. She becomes pregnant, but will not reveal her daughter's father. She shares nothing of her feelings or emotions. And when the demands of her work and caring for her child become too much, she leaves her baby in the care of her family, and sets out to open her own restaurant, which will soon win rave reviews and be lauded by all.But her relationship with her daughter will never be easy, and before long, it will threaten to destroy everything the Cheffe has spent her life perfecting.Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

*A GUARDIAN BEST TRANSLATED NOVEL OF 2023**A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2023 FINALIST**A WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS BEST TRANSLATED BOOK OF 2023*"A powerful story of mothers and daughters" Guardian"A haunting, mysterious tour de force" Lucy Scholes, Prospect"I was hypnotised from the first word to the last" Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch"[A] fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is" Mariana Enríquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in BedWhen Gilles Principaux walks into Maître Susane's legal practice seeking representation for his wife, his presence triggers memories from her childhood she had long buried. Gilles' wife is charged with drowning their three children, a case that will be splashed across the news media in Bordeaux and beyond. So why has he entrusted his wife's fate to her small, unremarkable practice?Maître Susane can't shake the feeling that she has met him before, that something happened between them one afternoon when she was barely ten and he was fourteen, something sinister she has never known how to remember. But Gilles seems so at ease her in presence that Maître Susane begins to believe that her memory must be playing tricks on her.Haunted by a past that both escapes and consumes her, Maître Susane fights to hold on to her memory, her identity and the chance she's been given to avenge herself.Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016Clarisse Rivière's life is shaped by a refusal to admit to her husband Richard and to her daughter Ladivine that her mother is a poor black housekeeper. Instead, weighed down by guilt, she pretends to be an orphan, visiting her mother in secret and telling no-one of her real identity as Malinka, daughter of Ladivine Sylla. In time, her lies turn against her. Richard leaves Clarisse, frustrated by the unbridgeable, indecipherable gulf between them. Clarisse is devastated, but finds solace in a new man, Freddy Moliger, who is let into the secret about her mother, and is even introduced to her. But Ladivine, her daughter, who is now married herself, cannot shake a bad feeling about her mother's new lover, convinced that he can bring only chaos and pain into her life. When she is proved right, in the most tragic circumstances, the only comfort the family can turn to requires a leap of faith beyond any they could have imagined.Centred around three generations of women, whose seemingly cursed lineage is defined by the weight of origins, the pain of alienation and the legacy of shame, Ladivine is a beguiling story of secrets, lies, guilt and forgiveness by one of Europe's most unique literary voices.Translated from the French by Jordan Stump

Obsessed by her encounters with the mysterious green women, and haunted by the Garonne River, a nameless narrator seeks them out in La Roele, Paris, Marseille, and Ouagadougou.Each encounter reveals different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive, seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her obsession, in this unsettling exploration of identity, memory and paranoia.Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. Written in diary entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery, we start with and return to the river, which mirrors the narrative by posing more questions than it answers.

Marie NDiaye blir en alltmer oundgänglig författare för var roman hon skriver.

SVT Kulturnyheterna

Marie NDiaye är mästerlig på precis den sortens stämning, den som på ytan verkar förhållandevis alldaglig och odramatisk, men där hon låter ana att det finns hemligheter som kan vända upp och ner på allt man har hållit för sant

Tidningen Vi

Marie NDiaye, en av Frankrikes främsta författare och ständigt nobelpristippad, har skrivit en roman som en hyllning till gastronomin som och det konstnärliga skapandet.

La cheffe, som hon boken igenom kallas, kommer från enkla förhållanden i sydvästra Frankrike och skickas som fjortonåring iväg till en förmögen familj för att där arbeta som hemhjälp. När kocken i familjen åker på semester så får hon ta över köket och upptäcker då den kulinariska konsten och en helt ny värld.

Sexton år gammal blir hon gravid, vem pappan är förblir oklart. Hon föder en dotter som delvis får växa upp hos hennes föräldrar, alltmedan hon satsar allt på sitt yrkesliv, utvecklar nya rätter, öppnar restauranger, får sin första Michelinstjärna och senare också får bevittna hur det rasar ihop.

Vi får följa hennes liv, hennes såriga relation till sin dotter och hennes livslånga passion för gastronomin.

Berättaren i boken är en anställd på en av hennes restauranger, han är bara hälften så gammal som hon, han beundrar och älskar henne på avstånd, och det är genom hans berättelse som vi får lära känna denna outgrundliga, mångbottnade person.

 

Hon är säregen och suggestiv som ingen annan

Svenska Dagbladet

Marie NDiaye är en av Europas mest läsvärda författare

Expressen

”Min är hämnden är en psykologisk thriller som inte släpper läsaren ur sitt grepp … och samtidigt en storartad samhällsskildring.”Le Figaro Littéraire

”Det är fängslande, oroande, otäckt och spännande.”L’Express

Nobelpristippade Marie NDiaye är tillbaka med en roman som Nouvel Observateur kallade höstens ”främsta och mest skarpslipande diamant” i den franska bokfloden.

Maître Susane, en 42-årig advokat, får besök av en man vid namn Gilles Principaux. Hon tycker sig känna igen honom men kan inte vara säker. Som tioårig flicka var hon hejdlöst förälskad i en fjortonårig pojke som skulle kunna vara han, men vad som egentligen hände då är höljt i dunkel. Blev hon utsatt för något, som hennes far hävdar? Hon litar inte på sina egna minnen.

Det Principaux vill ha hjälp med är ingen liten sak: att försvara hans hustru, som just har tagit livet av parets tre små barn.

I maître Susanes liv flockas samtidigt andra människor. En vag känsla av skuld präglar tillvaron, och nu har ett spöke från det förflutna kommit tillbaka med en hårresande begäran. Men vem är egentligen Gilles Principaux? Skruvarna dras åt i detta drama om sanning och minne.