Born in Germany in 1876, Paula Modersohn-Becker was the first female artist to paint herself not only naked but pregnant. Being Here is a moving account of the life of this ground-breaking Expressionist painter, by the acclaimed French writer Marie Darrieussecq. As her art evolves, Paula is torn between Paris and her home in northern Germany. In Paris she can focus on her work, and mix with artists like Rodin and Monet, or her close friend the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. But Germany is home, and that's where her painter husband Otto lives.Darrieussecq thrillingly describes Paula's discovery of her style and choice of subjects—women, babies, domestic life. She tells the story of her fraught marriage, her ambivalence about combining her passion for her career as an artist with motherhood. And she recounts her tragic death at thirty-one, days after giving birth.Marie Darrieussecq is a French writer born in Bayonne in 1969. Her first novel, Pig...

Winner Prix Médicis, Prix des Prix, 2013The French title of Men plays on a quote by Marguerite Duras: We have to love men a lot. A lot, a lot. Love them a lot in order to love them. Otherwise it's impossible, we couldn't bear them.'With her characteristic intensity, edginess and humour, Marie Darrieussecq explores female desire, what it means to be a woman. Solange was a provincial teenager in All the Way; now in her thirties, she’s not a great mother, is a mediocre actress, but in Hollywood she falls for a charismatic actor, Kouhouesso, who wants to direct a movie of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—in Africa. He’s black; she’s white—what’s the difference when it comes to love, she wonders?Solange follows her man to Africa, determined to play a main role in both his film and his affections. But nothing goes to plan in this brilliantly droll examination of romance, movie-making and clichés about race relations. After all,...

In the near future, a woman is writing in the depths of a forest. She's cold. Her body is falling apart, as is the world around her. She's lost the use of one eye; she's down to one kidney, one lung. Before, in the city, she was a psychotherapist, treating patients who had suffered trauma, in particular a man, "the clicker". Every two weeks, she travelled out to the Rest Centre, to visit her "half", Marie, her spitting image, who lay in an induced coma, her body parts available whenever the woman needed them. As a form of resistance against the terror in the city, the woman flees, along with other fugitives and their halves. But life in the forest is disturbing too—the reanimated halves are behaving like uninhibited adolescents. And when she sees a shocking image of herself on video, are her worst fears confirmed?Our Life in the Forest, written in her inimitable concise, vivid prose recalls Darrieusecq's brilliant debut, Pig Tales. A dystopian...

A powerful, hilarious and achingly honest story about a young French girl discovering her sexuality. Solange wants to have sex. Will it be with one of the boys at school? The exchange student? The fireman she meets at the disco when she sneaks out one night? Or with Arnaud, the coolest boy she knows? She’d like to see more of her father, even though he’s so embarrassing. As for her mother, she’s too depressed. Something to do with the photo of the dead boy on the mantelpiece. Monsieur Bihotz, her neighbour who lives alone now his mother has died, is supposed to be her babysitter but Solange has other ideas. There’s really not much scope in her boring village, Clèves. But who cares, Solange will get to do it, go all the way, whatever it takes. All the Way is a brilliant and hilarious picture of an adolescent girl.Marie Darrieussecq was born in 1969 in Bayonne, France. Her debut novel,...

In its original French, Tom Est Mort was nominated for the Prix Femina and the Prix Goncourt. This edition is translated by Lia Hills.Tom died when he was four.To stop herself from forgetting him, his mother tries to write Tom's story, the story of his death. She strives to describe it all as precisely as possible. It's the details that will lead her and the reader to the truth. Set in the Blue Mountains and in Sydney, Tom is Dead is a suspense novel in which Darrieussecq takes us to the core of grief and drives this narrator's experience into our hearts.'There are very few writers who may have changed my perception of the world, but Darrieussecq is one of them.' The Times