A renowned French author asks fundamental questions about motherhood, gender roles and identity. A must read for fans of Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti, Jenny Offill and Maggie Nelson.

The Baby is a mother’s project and a writer’s project-how to reconcile these two demanding roles?

What is a baby? And why are there so few of them in literature? Through notes taken in the months after her first child was born, Darrieussecq, in her characteristically ingenious style, makes observations that will bring smiles and grimaces of recognition, and raise important questions.

Along with the banal drudgery of childcare, there is the euphoria, the obsession, the terror and the visceral focus on the body. Arguing with ‘Saint de Beauvoir’, Darrieussecq examines how women as mothers are targeted from all angles. How, she asks, can a woman be more and other than a mother?

Marie Darrieussecq is a French writer born in Bayonne in 1969. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was published in 1996 and translated into thirty-five languages. She has written more than twenty books. In 2013 she was awarded both the Prix Medicis and the Prix des Prix for her novel Men. She lives in Paris.

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