Madeleine Bourdouxhe

Marie is enjoying life. She has a husband, whom she adores with every ounce of her being (and who equally adores her), and shes 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 intense love affair, opening a window into Maries untapped desires. As she explores the vibrant immediacy of her yearnings, Marie begins to see her entire world anew. Set among the bustling train stations and narrow rues of 1940s Paris, Marie is a hypnotically powerful and life-affirming novel detailing the interior life of a 20th century woman - with exquisitely crafted moments of sensual acuity and profound insight. A short, intense novel, suffused with tenderness, humour and sensuality. . . . mixing passion and politi as its existentialist heroine embarks on a desire fuelled route of living at full-tilt. - Michele RobertsExquisite, quiet, elegant, disciplined and nonsentimental . . . Bourdouxhe conveys the sharp, almost physical intensity of thought as experienced by a central character suspended between apathy and restless curiosity. - Irish TimesBourdouxhe was a writer admired by her contemporary Simone de Beauvoir. It is easy to see why: female autonomy, a delight in Paris and its freedoms, the rapture of living in the present and seizing life with both hands . . . luminous. - Times Educational SupplementAn unforgettable, thrilling achievement . . . stakes a claim to Bourdouxhes rightful position alongside Proust and Virginia Woolf as an explorer of interior life . . . inspiring and impassioned. - Sunday Times

Elisa is Gilles wife and her devotion to him is passionate and all-consuming. Her daily life is permeated by thoughts of him - thoughts of his return from the factory, thoughts of his footsteps on the path as he arrives home each evening, when, in the minutes before his return, she is overcome with paralysing anticipation. But when Gilles suddenly finds himself powerfully and helplessly attracted to Elisas younger sister, Victorine, Elisas world is overturned. The joys of home and family are destroyed and her desperation is so profound that it begins to threaten her every sense of reality and the core of her existence. Set among the dusty lanes and rolling valleys of rural Belgium in the 1930s, La Femme de Gilles is a sensual and shattering novel about infidelity, lust, and the loneliness of losing the one thing that matters most. One of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years. - Jonathan Coe, Guardian A marvellous, rediscovered novel about selfless love. - Kate Kellaway, Observer A haunting, slim novel which has the mesmeric inevitability of classical tragedy. - Independent on Sunday La Femme de Gilles is about physical passion, its etasies, aberrations and ruthlessness . . . quiet, compassionate and unsparing. - Times Literary Supplement

"A haunting, slim novel which has the mesmeric inevitability of a classical tragedy." --Independent on SundayLa Femme de Gilles tells the story of a fatal love trianglewritten on the eve of World War II.Set among the dusty lanes and rolling valleys of rural 1930s Belgium, La Femme de Gilles is the tale of a young mother, Elisa, whose world is overturned when she discovers that her husband, Gilles, has fallen in love with her younger sister, Victorine. Devastated, Elisa unravels.As controlled as Elena Ferrante''s The Days of Abandonment and as propulsive as Jenny Offill''s Dept. of Speculation, La Femme de Gilles is a hauntingly contemporary story of desperation and lust and obsession, from an essential early-feminist writer.Just after her novel was first published in 1937, Madeleine Bourdouxhe disassociated herself from her publisher (which had been taken over by the Nazis) and spent most of World War II in Brussels, actively working for the resistance. Though she continued to write, her work was largely overlooked by history . . . until now.

Enredo de paixão, ciúme e sensualidade inédito no Brasil revela obra-prima de autora belga admirada por Simone de BeauvoirUm dos grandes temas da literatura, o adultério, recebe em A mulher de Gilles

«Breve, exacta, concisa, sugerente, cruel, emocionante, esta narración es una pequeña gran novela solitaria de una autora casi olvidada y que, por este libro, será siempre inolvidable», escribía José

Elisa vorrebbe solo una cosa: annullarsi in Gilles. Vivere per e attraverso Gilles, non essere altro che sua moglie. Preparargli la cena, guardarlo mangiare, guardare i suoi occhi, la sua bocca, i suoi capelli. Ma il giorno in cui Elisa capisce che Gilles, suo marito, e diventato l''amante di sua sorella, tutto crolla attorno a lei. Eppure sceglie di tacere, di sorridere, di sopportare in silenzio l''indifferenza di Gilles, perfino che Gilles le parli del suo amore per l''altra, della sua gelosia. Madeleine Bourdouxhe, considerata tra i maggiori scrittori belgi del secolo scorso, pubblico questo romanzo nel 1937.

El amor de Élisa hacia Gilles, su marido, es absoluto y emocionalmente completo. Gilles es feliz al lado de su maravillosa mujer y de su familia. Nadie hubiera podido intuir la fragilidad de esa felicidad domestica. Pero Gilles y la hermana menor de su esposa, Victorine, caen en una pasion ciega. Perdido el eje de su existencia, Elisa se adentra en un mundo de angustia, en una profunda desesperacion que la llevara al suicidio. La mujer de Gilles, originalmente publicada en Paris en 1937, no solo narra la historia de un amor apasionado que transcure en una familia obrera en Belgica durante los años treinta, sino que presenta un agudo analisis sobre el erotismo de una sorprendente modernidad. Los libros de Madeleine Bourdouxhe, elogiados por Simone de Beauvoir, habian permanecido olvidados durante decadas. Sin embargo, hoy son apreciados en todo el mundo y La mujer de Gilles en particular, despues de una serie de avatares, se ha convertido en una joya literaria que por fin el lector español tiene entre sus manos.

Wenn er kommt, steht sie immer regungslos da, ein wenig verstort, so dass er auf sie zugeht und sie sanft auf die Stirn kusst.Elisa und Gilles sind glucklich, die Rollen klar verteilt. Liebe bedeutet fur Elisa: Ehefrau zu sein. Sie wohnen mit ihren kleinen Zwillingstochtern in einer Arbeitersiedlung am Rande einer Industriestadt, und jeden Abend wartet Elisa sehnsuchtig auf ihren Mann. Doch ausgerechnet ihre jungere Schwester Victorine verdreht Gilles den Kopf. Elisa, die hochschwanger ist, kommt schnell dahinter, nimmt seine Untreue hin, demutigt sich, wird gar zur Komplizin seiner Begierde, bis Victorine ihn verlasst. Als Elisa schlielich klar wird, dass sie nun ihrerseits Gilles nicht mehr liebt, kapituliert sie.Ein meisterhafter Roman uber die zerstorerische Kraft absoluter Liebe.

Enchanting stories of womens inner lives by the rediscovered Belgian author Madeleine BourdouxheThese 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 mistresss 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.Madeleine Bourdouxhe was born in Belgium in 1906. She moved to Paris with her parents during the First World War before returning to Brussels to study Philosophy. Her first novel, La Femme de Gilles, was published in 1937, and a second novel, Marie, followed in 1943. Interest in her work revived in the 1980s, with both novels being reprinted and translated into many languages, and her collection of stories A Nail, A Rose first appeared in English in 1989. Bourdouxhe died in Brussels in 1996.

Un mundo de pasiones. Un viaje por el complicado mundo de las relaciones de pareja. Una novela de gran belleza