Self-Portrait in Green-On the Work of Marie NDiaye

The Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith hosts a virtual event to celebrate the 10th anniversary edition of Marie NDiaye’s genre-defying classic, Self-Portrait in Green with her primary English translator, Jordan Stump. He will be in conversation with writers Alexandra Kleeman, Giada Scodellaro, and Jennifer Wilson.
Who are the green women? They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend’s father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author’s own mother).
They are all aspects of their creator: Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France’s leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye’s self-portrait forces us all to ask questions-about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.
This 10th anniversary hardcover edition of Marie NDiaye’s genre-defying classic restores photographs that appeared in the original French edition alongside Jordan Stump’s dazzling translation, revealing in English, at last, the complete vision of NDiaye’s influential masterpiece.
Hosted by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith, this virtual event was originally recorded on September 12, 2023.
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