My Heart Hemmed in - by Marie Ndiaye (Paperback)

About the Book

Nadia, the Narrator, is a school teacher in Bordeaux in the same school as her husband, Ange. They live their profession as apostolates and gain an authentic happiness. But for some time, the couple is the subject of a general, harassing and inexplicable vengeance by the students. Nobody wants to sit in the front row anymore; no one wants to hear the sounds of their voices; the children seem to be afraid of them... Nadia tries to understand the nature of this strange conspiracy through the movement of the story.

Book Synopsis

"Marie NDiaye is a master of creating menacing, off-kilter worlds that speak to the truth of human experience."-Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White

There is something very wrong with Nadia and her husband Ange, middle-aged provincial schoolteachers who slowly realize that they are despised by everyone around them. One day a savage wound appears in Ange's stomach, and as Nadia fights to save her husband's life their hideous neighbor Noget-a man everyone insists is a famous author-inexplicably imposes his care upon them. While Noget fattens them with ever richer foods, Nadia embarks on a nightmarish visit to her ex-husband and estranged son-is she abandoning Ange or revisiting old grievances in an attempt to save him?

Conjuring an atmosphere of paranoia and menace, My Heart Hemmed In creates a bizarre, foggy world where strange coincidences, harsh cruelty, and constantly shifting relationships all seem part of some shadowy truth. Surreal, allegorical, and psychologically acute, My Heart Hemmed In shows a masterful author giving her readers her most complex and compelling world yet.

Review Quotes

A Millions Most Anticipated Book

"Marie NDiaye is a master of creating menacing, off-kilter worlds that speak to the truth of human experience."--Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White

"A book with mysterious authority...it still baffles and beguiles me." --Colin Winnette, author of Users

"If any contemporary European writer is on the verge of Ferrante-like recognition, it's NDiaye." --Flavorwire

"My Heart Hemmed In has the psychological depth of a case study and the sensory texture of a hallucination." --Harper's

"Claustrophobic, slow-burning, . . . and devastating." -- Publishers Weekly

"NDiaye is masterful in ripping apart genre and reconstructing it--My Heart Hemmed In reads like noir but doesn't concern itself with conventional plot twists, instead digging deeper into the narrator's psychological and spiritual reckoning." --Ashely Nelson Levy, author of Immediate Family

"My Heart Hemmed In thoroughly consumes the reader with its lovely, spooky language . . . Like Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream, it generates both a sense of mounting unease and a pleasurable desire to learn just what, exactly, has gone so wrong." -- Caite Dolan-Leach, author of Dead Letters

"The latest translation of Marie NDiaye into English is unquestionably one of the great novels of 2017. Eerily prescient in its examination of cruelty, xenophobia, and paranoia, My Heart Hemmed In is both a comfort and a warning in an increasingly destabilized world." -- Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell

"[My Heart Hemmed In] suggest[s] one way for the novel to evolve if it wants to record the particular kinds of estrangement we face today." -- Bookforum

"A master class in how abstraction can be used to portray an unreliable yet sympathetic narrator. . . . This book forces the reader into an unknown realm of constant distress." -- The Brooklyn Rail

"Her subject matter could not be more fascinating, high stakes, and of the moment. . . . NDiaye [is] one of the most exciting -- and challenging -- writers working today.-- Los Angeles Review of Books

"NDiaye crafts a world full of unease and tension with all the turns and uncertainty of a labyrinth." -- World Literature Today

"A middle-aged couple who teach in a provincial French town are suddenly ostracized by the entire community. Their crime? They don't know and can't seem to find out. This is a devastating, visceral, and harsh book dripping with paranoia." -- Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore

"My Heart Hemmed In is extraordinary: an original and suspenseful novel that exposes all that is monstrous and ugly in the way that we regard those around us. . . . The temptation to turn the pages quickly is great but the prose is so fine that you will want to savor it. With its unsettling atmosphere reminiscent of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child, NDiaye's brilliant novel obtains pride of place with the very best literary horror. My Heart Hemmed In is a morality tale for our times." -- Lori Feathers, Interabang Books and the National Book Critics Circle Board Member

"NDiaye is writing a literature both innovative and incredible." -- The New Republic

"[NDiaye's] inspiration lies not in the real world but in nightmares or, more specifically, in the Freudian unconscious." -- The New York Times

"NDiaye's novel is haunting in its strangeness and is pointed in its warnings. . . . Eerie, involving, and surreal." -- Foreword Reviews

"NDiaye is a rare novelist." -- NPR

About the Author

Marie NDiaye met her father for the first time at age 15, two years before publishing her first novel. She is the recipient of the Prix Femina and the Prix Goncourt, the latter being highest honor a French writer can receive. One of ten finalists for the 2013 International Booker Prize, alongside Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson, she is the author of over a dozen plays and works of prose. She lives in Germany. Jordan Stump is one of the leading translators of innovative French literature. The recipient of numerous honors and prizes, he has translated books by Nobel laureate Claude Simon, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and Eric Chevillard, as well as Jules Verne's French-language novel The Mysterious Island. His translation of NDiaye's All My Friends was shortlisted for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He lives in Lincoln, NB.