Marie NDiaye | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1967-06-04)4 June 1967 (age 57) Pithiviers,Loiret, France |
| Occupation | Novelist,essayist,playwright |
| Period | 1984–present |
| Notable awards | Nelly Sachs Prize (2015) |
| Spouse | Jean-Yves Cendrey |
| Relatives | Pap Ndiaye (brother) |
Marie NDiaye (born 4 June 1967) is a French novelist, playwright and screenwriter. She published her first novel,Quant au riche avenir, when she was 17. She won thePrix Goncourt in 2009. Her playPapa doit manger is the sole play by a living female writer to be part of the repertoire of theComédie française. She co-wrote the screenplay for the 2022 legal dramaSaint Omer alongside its directorAlice Diop, and Amrita David. In September 2022 the film was selected as France's official selection forBest International Film at the95th Academy Awards.[1]
NDiaye was born in 1967 inPithiviers, France, to a French mother and aSenegalese father. She grew up with her mother and her brotherPap Ndiaye in the suburbs of Paris. Her parents met as students in the mid-1960s, but her father returned to Senegal when she was one year old.
She began writing at the age of 12. As a senior in high school, she was discovered byJerome Lindon, founder ofÉditions de Minuit, who published her first novel,Quant au riche avenir, in 1985.[2]
She subsequently wrote six more novels, all published by Minuit, and a collection of short stories. She also wrote herComédie classique, a 200-page novel made up of a single sentence, which was published by Éditions P.O.L in 1988, when she was 21 years old. In addition, NDiaye has written several plays. She co-wrote the screenplay forWhite Material with directorClaire Denis. NDiaye's 2003 dramaPapa doit manger is distinguished as the second play by a female writer to be taken into the repertoire of the Comédie française.
In 1998, NDiaye wrote a letter to the press in which she argued that her novelLa Sorcière, published two years earlier, had strongly informed the content ofNaissance des fantômes, the second novel of successful authorMarie Darrieussecq.[3]
Her novelTrois femmes puissantes won the 2009Prix Goncourt.[4] In his 2013 critical study of the author,Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition, British academic Andrew Asibong describes her as "the epitome of a certain kind of cultural brilliance".[5] In his psychoanalytic exploration of the writer's evocation of trauma and disavowal, he says that "NDiaye's work explores the violence done to the subject's capacity forfeeling andknowing".[6]
In an interview published byLes Inrockuptibles on 30 August 2009, NDiaye declared aboutSarkozy's France,
"I find that France monstrous. The fact that we [with her companion, writerJean-Yves Cendrey [fr] and their three children-- editor's note] have chosen to live in Berlin for two years is far from being unrelated to that. We left just after the elections, in a large part because ofSarkozy, even if I am very aware that saying that can seem snobbish. I find that atmosphere of vulgarity and heavy policing detestable ...Besson,Hortefeux, all of those people, I find them monstrous".[7]
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