Die Rache ist mein

What is truth, 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 a sophisticated, abysmal game with us and our expectations and fears.
Maître Susane, a lawyer in Bordeaux, receives a visit in her office from a certain Gilles Principaux. She thinks she recognises in him the boy from her childhood with whom she once visited. Something had happened then, but she hardly remembers it. 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 Marlyne, who has committed a horrific crime: she killed their three children. Maître Susane takes on the case - and falls into a bottomless pit. What is going on with this mother? Who is this Gilles Principaux really? And is she herself at all who she thinks she is?.