Die Rache ist mein

Maître Susane, 42, a lawyer in Bordeaux, receives a visit in her office from a certain Gilles Principaux. She thinks she knows this man from her youth: There was an encounter with an older, impressive boy from a wealthy family that gave her life a whole new direction. But she hardly remembers what actually happened back then. She indignantly rejects her father's insinuations that the boy might have come too close to her. Principaux asks her to take on the defence of his wife, who has committed a horrific crime: Marlyne Principaux has killed her three children. Maître Susane takes on the case - and falls into a bottomless pit. What is going on with this mother? What role do Maître Susane's Moorish maids and their children play in all this? Who is this Gilles Principaux really? And is she herself even who she thinks she is?A lawyer is hired to defend a mother who murdered her three children. But isn't she connected to the children's father by a momentous encounter many years before? What is truth here, what is a lie? And is it possible to live without certainty? Marie NDiaye's stirring novel about a woman in an extreme situation is the literary event of the year in France: a sophisticated, abysmal game with us and our expectations and fears. "The great Marie NDiaye has written the literary event of the year." Les Inrockuptibles "Marie NDiaye doesn't just throw her readers off balance, she literally knocks them over." Livres Hebdo "At once a gripping thriller and a great social novel." Le Figaro Littéraire "An exceptional novel about the contradiction in which women are caught."Le Masque et la Plume "Marie NDiaye writes about contemporary France and captures what moves society" Le Point.