Thérèse desqueyroux

Over two and a half decades before he became a Nobel Laureate, Mauriac published his short novel in book form. Mauriac’s «existential» heroine, her struggle over whether to kill her way out of an unsatisfactory marriage and the bourgeois world that came with it, and her complex relationship with the Catholicism of her milieu startled his readers. In this new translation, MacKenzie (English, U. of St. Thomas, Minnesota) also provides commentary and the fascinating first draft, which is in the form of a letter of confession to a priest. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR