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Showing 1 - 19 of
19 matches in All Departments
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The Witch (Paperback)
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by Jordan Stump
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R360
R275
Discovery Miles 2 750
Save R85 (24%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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In a small, sleepy town, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own.
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mum was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie's own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes - but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details - a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.
Lucie's own children are initiated into their family's peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.
Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you - can you? - build a nest that no one wants to fly?
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. Each encounter reveals
different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive,
seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her
obsession, in this unsettling exploration of identity, memory and
paranoia. Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie
NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. Written in diary
entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery, we start with
and return to the river, which mirrors the narrative by posing more
questions than it answers.
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Vengeance is Mine
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by Jordan Stump
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R332
R298
Discovery Miles 2 980
Save R34 (10%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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When Gilles Principaux walks into Maître Susane's law office
seeking representation for his wife, his presence triggers memories
from her childhood she had long buried. Gilles's wife is charged
with drowning their three children and the media are circling
around what will be one of the biggest trials in Bordeaux. So why
has he chosen the small legal practice of a lawyer he seems not to
recognise? Maître Susane can't shake the feeling that she has met
him before, that something happened between them one afternoon when
she was barely ten and he was fourteen, something that she has
never known how to remember. As she works on one of the biggest
cases of her career, her own sense of what is true and not true
will draw her into an uneasy reckoning with her past. Translated
from the French by Jordan Stump.
"Marie NDiaye is so intelligent, so composed, so good, that any
description of her work feels like an understatement" - Madeleine
Schwartz, New York Review of Books "Rich, meandering . . . NDiaye
excels at luscious, forensic descriptions of the ritualistic
preparation of food" - Catherine Taylor, Mail on Sunday The Cheffe
is born into an impoverished family in Sainte-Bazeille in
south-western France, but when she takes a job working in the
kitchen of a couple in the Landes region, it does not take long
before it becomes clear that the Cheffe has an unusual, remarkable
talent for cooking. She dreams in recipes, she's always imagining
new food combinations, she hunts down elusive flavours and aromas,
and she soon usurps the couple's cook. But for all her genius, the
Cheffe remains very secretive about the rest of her life. She
becomes pregnant, but will not reveal her daughter's father. She
shares nothing of her feelings or emotions. And when the demands of
her work and caring for her child become too much, she leaves her
baby in the care of her family, and sets out to open her own
restaurant, which will soon win rave reviews and be lauded by all.
But her relationship with her daughter will never be easy, and
before long, it will threaten to destroy everything the Cheffe has
spent her life perfecting. Translated from the French by Jordan
Stump.
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Three Strong Women (Paperback)
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by John Fletcher
1
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R313
R283
Discovery Miles 2 830
Save R30 (10%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Three women who almost had it all...Norah thinks she has made it
when she qualifies as a lawyer in Paris; Fanta works her way into a
prestigious teaching job in her home city; Khady runs a cafe with
her loving husband - now all she wants is a child. But family ties,
broken or reasserted, will force each woman to face a journey from
France to Africa or from Africa to France that will take the future
out of their hands and change their lives forever. Domineering
fathers, weak lovers, the perilous road of the refugee - they will
need all their courage and inner strength if they are to overcome.
From Man Booker International Prize finalist, Marie NDiaye.
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Ladivine (Paperback)
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by Jordan Stump
1
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R314
R285
Discovery Miles 2 850
Save R29 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016 Clarisse
Riviere's life is shaped by a refusal to admit to her husband
Richard and to her daughter Ladivine that her mother is a poor
black housekeeper. Instead, weighed down by guilt, she pretends to
be an orphan, visiting her mother in secret and telling no-one of
her real identity as Malinka, daughter of Ladivine Sylla. In time,
her lies turn against her. Richard leaves Clarisse, frustrated by
the unbridgeable, indecipherable gulf between them. Clarisse is
devastated, but finds solace in a new man, Freddy Moliger, who is
let into the secret about her mother, and is even introduced to
her. But Ladivine, her daughter, who is now married herself, cannot
shake a bad feeling about her mother's new lover, convinced that he
can bring only chaos and pain into her life. When she is proved
right, in the most tragic circumstances, the only comfort the
family can turn to requires a leap of faith beyond any they could
have imagined. Centred around three generations of women, whose
seemingly cursed lineage is defined by the weight of origins, the
pain of alienation and the legacy of shame, Ladivine is a beguiling
story of secrets, lies, guilt and forgiveness by one of Europe's
most unique literary voices. Translated from the French by Jordan
Stump
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Rosie Carpe (Hardcover)
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by Tamsin Black
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R1,015
Discovery Miles 10 150
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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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.
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Rosie Carpe (Paperback)
Marie Ndiaye; Translated by Tamsin Black
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R486
R415
Discovery Miles 4 150
Save R71 (15%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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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.
A "New York Times" Notable Book
A "San Francisco Chronicle" Best Book of 2012
A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Book of 2012
Longlisted for The 2014 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award
From Marie NDiaye, the first black woman to win the Prix Goncourt,
a harrowing and beautiful novel of the travails of West African
immigrants in France.
The story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer
who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged father to
save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a contented
life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her boyfriend back to France,
where his depression and dislocation poison everything; and Khady,
a penniless widow put out by her husband's family with nothing but
the name of a distant cousin in France. As these three lives
intertwine, each woman manages an astonishing feat of
self-preservation against those who have made themselves the
fastest-growing and most-reviled people in Europe. In Marie
NDiaye's stunning narration we see the progress by which ordinary
women discover unimagined reserves of strength.
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