Marie Ndiaye Boeken

An investigation into culinary genius, freedom and identity.

Exploring the complexities of human relationships, the book presents five interconnected stories that challenge our understanding of intimacy and self-awareness. The narrative begins with a troubled love story involving a man and his housekeeper, spiraling into themes of obsession and familial discord. It also delves into the harrowing experiences of a boy yearning for escape and a poignant bus ride shared by a mother and her son. Through hypnotic prose, the author exposes the personal horrors we often conceal, allowing them to surface in a chilling yet compassionate manner.

The narrative centers on a talented chef who rises from poverty to culinary fame while maintaining emotional distance from her personal life. As she excels in the kitchen, her secretive nature complicates her relationship with her daughter, whom she leaves in her family's care to pursue her dreams. The story unfolds through the eyes of her former assistant and unrequited lover, providing a unique perspective on ambition, sacrifice, and the complexities of motherhood. Marie NDiaye's work explores the intersection of passion and personal sacrifice in the pursuit of excellence.

After a woman, Clarisse, is murdered on a trip to visit her mother in Bordeaux, her daughter tries to uncover what happened to her with the help of a brown dog who appears to have taken in the spirit of the deceased.

Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. 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.

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.

The spellbinding new novel by the Goncourt-winning, International Booker- shortlisted author of Three Strong Women

Set in a small community, the narrative explores themes of otherness and social amnesia through a surreal lens. The story unfolds with absurd kindness, intricate bureaucracy, and peculiar customs, all while grappling with the unsettling presence of missing persons and ghostly apparitions. This haunting vision reflects the complexities of privilege and the human experience, crafted by a celebrated French novelist known for his thought-provoking storytelling.

Forty-year-old Norah leaves Paris, her family and her career as a lawyer to visit her father in Dakar. It is an uncomfortable reunion - she is asked to use her skills as a lawyer to get her brother out of prison - and ultimately the trip endangers her marriage and her relationship with her own daughter, and drives her to the very edge of madness. Fanta, on the other hand, leaves Dakar to follow her husband Rudy to rural France. And it is through Rudy's bitter and guilt-ridden perspective that we see Fanta stagnate with boredom in this alien, narrow environment. Khady is forced into exile from Senegal because of poverty, because her husband is dead, because she is lonely and in despair. With other illegal immigrants, she embarks on a journey which takes her nowhere, but from which she will never return.

A powerful and disturbing novel by the author of Three Strong Women and The Cheffe