Mirjam de Veth Book order (chronological)

Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succès de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance.This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction.

Naarmate haar verloederde omgeving steeds meer verandert in een spreekwoordelijke zwijnenstal verandert een jonge vrouw letterlijk in een varken.

Wanneer haar moeder niet komt opdagen op een afspraakje in een café in Parijs, komt de dochter tot een frappante conclusie.

Een vrouw die haar voorvaderlijk landhuis wil opknappen en opnieuw bewonen, wordt op allerlei manieren tegengewerkt door een projectontwikkelaar.

One of the major accomplishments of Cohen-Solal's book is not only to place Sartre in the context of history, but to reopen the question of his role and to reassess the full import of his literary and political accomplishments. Discovering untold aspects of Sartre's private and political life, Cohen-Solal weaves together all the elements of an exceptional career. From the description of his previously unknown father to the painful last moments of Sartre's own declining years, this is biography on the grandest scale.