Description

*A GUARDIAN BEST TRANSLATED NOVEL OF 2023*

*A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2023 FINALIST*

*A WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS BEST TRANSLATED BOOK OF 2023*

“A powerful story of mothers and daughters” Guardian

“A haunting, mysterious tour de force” Lucy Scholes, Prospect

“I was hypnotised from the first word to the last” Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch

“[A] fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is” Mariana Enriquez, author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

When Gilles Principaux walks into Maitre Susane’s legal practice seeking representation for his wife, his presence triggers memories from her childhood she had long buried. Gilles’ wife is charged with drowning their three children, a case that will be splashed across the news media in Bordeaux and beyond. So why has he entrusted his wife’s fate to her small, unremarkable practice?

Maitre Susane can’t shake the feeling that she has met him before, that something happened between them one afternoon when she was barely ten and he was fourteen, something sinister she has never known how to remember. But Gilles seems so at ease her in presence that Maitre Susane begins to believe that her memory must be playing tricks on her.

Haunted by a past that both escapes and consumes her, Maitre Susane fights to hold on to her memory, her identity and the chance she’s been given to avenge herself.

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

Publisher Review

A novel of concentric haunting, summoning ghosts into the room with prose that shimmers, cuts, and sings. Unflinching and restrained, Vengeance is Mine sails its readers into uncharted psychological waters. I was hypnotised from the first word to the last. -- Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch In this disquieting, quietly beautiful novel, Marie NDiaye writes about an unimaginable crime placing around it a world of confusion, trauma, and memories of a past that cannot be trusted. There's more questions than answers in this fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is. -- Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night