Marie Darrieussecq

Marie Darrieussecq (b. 1969, Bayonne, France) is a French novelist, essayist, and psychoanalyst who lives and works in Paris. She studied literature at the École normale supérieure and holds a doctorate in literature and a degree in psychoanalysis. She publishes with P.O.L.

Her debut novel, Truismes (Pig Tales, P.O.L., 1996), written in six weeks and set in a near-future France, follows a woman who gradually transforms into a sow; the book sold more than 300,000 copies in France and was translated into thirty-five languages. The works that followed — Naissance des fantômes (1998), Le Mal de mer (1999), Bref séjour chez les vivants (2001), Tom est mort (2007, Prix médicis étranger selection), Rapport de police (2010, Prix des prix littéraires), Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes (2013, Prix Médicis), Being Here Is Everything: The Life of Paula M. Becker (2016), Notre vie dans les forêts (2017), Tenir debout (2022) — move between fiction, biography, and the essay with formal inventiveness and psychological precision. Several engage directly with questions of embodiment, sexuality, grief, and the porous boundary between the living and the dead. Her biography of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, Être ici est une splendeur (2016), received particular critical attention. She has also published extensively on questions of gender, psychoanalysis, and literary form.

She received the Prix Médicis in 2013 for Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes and has been recognized internationally with prizes in Europe and the United States.