For fans of Rachel Cusk, Crossed Lines is a critique of a woman’s midlife, middle-class crisis of conscience, told through the astute and clever voice of one of France’s most prolific writers. Translated by Penny Hueston.

When her mother offers Rose a Mediterranean cruise with her two children, she jumps at the chance to get away from her husband who drinks too much, and the renovations of their holiday house in the south. But one night the cruise ship comes upon a shipwrecked boat full of refugees, who are taken aboard. Without telling her teenage son, Rose gives his mobile phone to a young Nigerian refugee. Does she want to be some kind of a hero, ease her conscience? Now what is she in for? The secret phone connection takes Rose and her family on a journey of discovery.

With her trademark wit and acid intelligence, Marie Darrieussecq, like Rachel Cusk or Jenny Offill, shines a light on issues of individual responsibility in our complex world.

Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969 and is recognised as one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. She has written more than twenty books. Text has published Tom Is Dead, All the Way, Men, Being Here- The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest, The Baby and Crossed Lines. In 2013 Marie Darrieussecq was awarded the Prix Medicis and the Prix des Prix for her novel Men. She has written art criticism and journalism for a number of publications, including Liberation and Charlie Hebdo, and is also a translator from English and has practised as a psychoanalyst. She lives in Paris.


Penny Hueston has translated five other books by Marie Darrieussecq-All the Way, Men, Being Here- The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest and The Baby.