Marie Darrieussecq

Marie Darrieussecq (born 3 January 1969 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) is a French novelist.

Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne and raised in a small village in the Basque Country.

While finishing her PhD in French literature, she wrote her first novel, Truismes (Pig Tales) which was published in September 1996 by Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (POL), who have published all her subsequent novels as well. After the success of Truismes, Darrieussecq decided to quit her teaching position at the University of Lille III to concentrate on writing her novels.

Her first husband was a mathematician and her second is an astrophysicist. She gave birth to a son in 2001 and to a daughter in 2004.

She endorsed Ségolène Royal's candidacy during the French Presidential Elections of 2007.

In 1986 Darrieussecq completed the Baccalauréat in French Literature from the Lycée Cassin in Bayonne. She entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris where she studied to become a professor. The three years she spent preparing her entrance exam to the Ecole Normale are the only three where she did not do any writing. She continued her studies toward a PhD in French Literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (University of Paris III) and at Jussieu (University of Paris VII). In 1997 she defended her doctoral thesis “Autofiction and tragic irony in the works of Georges Perec, Michel Leiris, Serge Doubrovsky, and Hervé Guibert” under the direction of Francis Marmande.

While speaking of any important lessons learned in her life, she is quoted as saying “I am distrustful of lessons in school or in life. It is especially psychoanalysis, very different from a lesson, that has given me my own freedom.”

There are many recurrent themes in the works of Marie Darrieussecq. The essential theme in all her works is that of disappearance and absence. One also finds the theme of the ocean as "memory tank." And the most obvious theme is her choice to have a female main character. In all of the books that she has written, the main character is a woman. Another theme that is frequent in her writings is the question of identity and belonging. The importance of identity and belonging can be explained by her statement: "Writing for me is a humanism: it is about leaving one's skin and going toward the Other." She tries to find the true person in her characters.

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