'Madeleine Bourdouxhe is one of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years' Jonathan Coe

These are stories of longing and dissatisfaction, of daily life ruptured by strange currents of feeling. A woman, wandering alone and heartbroken, is first attacked and then romantically pursued by a stranger. A maid wears her mistress's expensive coat to meet her lover, but finds herself more preoccupied by fantasies of intimacy with 'Madame'. A woman gives birth on the day foreign troops invade the city, and must flee with her newborn on the back of a truck.

Written in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Europe, and admired by the Existentialists and the Surrealists alike, these stories are now translated with extraordinary clarity by Faith Evans. With piercing insight and candour, Madeleine Bourdouxhe illuminates the conflicted hearts of the housewife, the mother, and the maid. These unforgettable tales of ordinary women are suffused with desire and melancholy, memory and fantasy, and lit by the furnace burning just beneath the surface of everyday life.

Thirty-year old Marie is enjoying life. She has a husband, whom she adores with every ounce of her being (and who equally adores her), and she s easily pleased by the smaller things in life the drag of a cigarette, a hotel balcony, the scattering of light across the surface of the sea. While on holiday, Marie spots a young man lying on the beach and is instantly drawn to him. Their connection develops into a passionate and intensely innate love affair, opening a window into Marie s untapped desires, which she begins to explore with vibrant immediacy and leads her to question her every decision. Set among the bustling train stations and narrow Parisian rues of 1940s France, Marie is a hypnotically powerful novel detailing the interior life of a 20th century European woman with exquisitely crafted moments of sensual acuity and profound insight.