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. She lives in Germany. Jordan Stump is one of the leading translators of innovative French literature. The recipient of numerous honors and prizes, he has translated books by Nobel laureate Claude Simon, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and Eric Chevillard, as well as Jules Verne's French-language novel The Mysterious Island. His translation of NDiaye's All My Friends was shortlisted for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He lives in Lincoln, NB.
A Millions Most Anticipated Book
"Marie NDiaye is a master of creating menacing, off-kilter worlds
that speak to the truth of human experience."--Ayşegül Savaş,
author of White on White
"A book with mysterious authority...it still baffles and beguiles
me." --Colin Winnette, author of Users
"If any contemporary European writer is on the verge of
Ferrante-like recognition, it's NDiaye." --Flavorwire
"My Heart Hemmed In has the psychological depth of a case study and
the sensory texture of a hallucination." --Harper's
"Claustrophobic, slow-burning, . . . and devastating." --
Publishers Weekly
"NDiaye is masterful in ripping apart genre and reconstructing
it--My Heart Hemmed In reads like noir but doesn't concern itself
with conventional plot twists, instead digging deeper into the
narrator's psychological and spiritual reckoning." --Ashely Nelson
Levy, author of Immediate Family
"My Heart Hemmed In thoroughly consumes the reader with its lovely,
spooky language . . . Like Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream, it
generates both a sense of mounting unease and a pleasurable desire
to learn just what, exactly, has gone so wrong." -- Caite
Dolan-Leach, author of Dead Letters
"The latest translation of Marie NDiaye into English is
unquestionably one of the great novels of 2017. Eerily prescient in
its examination of cruelty, xenophobia, and paranoia, My Heart
Hemmed In is both a comfort and a warning in an increasingly
destabilized world." -- Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell
"[My Heart Hemmed In] suggest[s] one way for the novel to evolve if
it wants to record the particular kinds of estrangement we face
today." -- Bookforum
"A master class in how abstraction can be used to portray an
unreliable yet sympathetic narrator. . . . This book forces the
reader into an unknown realm of constant distress." -- The Brooklyn
Rail
"Her subject matter could not be more fascinating, high stakes, and
of the moment. . . . NDiaye [is] one of the most exciting -- and
challenging -- writers working today.-- Los Angeles Review of
Books
"NDiaye crafts a world full of unease and tension with all the
turns and uncertainty of a labyrinth." -- World Literature
Today
"A middle-aged couple who teach in a provincial French town are
suddenly ostracized by the entire community. Their crime? They
don't know and can't seem to find out. This is a devastating,
visceral, and harsh book dripping with paranoia." -- Mark Haber,
Brazos Bookstore
"My Heart Hemmed In is extraordinary: an original and suspenseful
novel that exposes all that is monstrous and ugly in the way that
we regard those around us. . . . The temptation to turn the pages
quickly is great but the prose is so fine that you will want to
savor it. With its unsettling atmosphere reminiscent of Doris
Lessing's The Fifth Child, NDiaye's brilliant novel obtains pride
of place with the very best literary horror. My Heart Hemmed In is
a morality tale for our times." -- Lori Feathers, Interabang Books
and the National Book Critics Circle Board Member
"NDiaye is writing a literature both innovative and incredible." --
The New Republic "[NDiaye's] inspiration lies not in the real world
but in nightmares or, more specifically, in the Freudian
unconscious." -- The New York Times
"NDiaye's novel is haunting in its strangeness and is pointed in
its warnings. . . . Eerie, involving, and surreal." -- Foreword
Reviews "NDiaye is a rare novelist." -- NPR
Ask a Question About this Product More... |