Read more
There''s a voice in Aline''s head, a voice she''s long ignored. Brash, boisterous, sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim and proper literature professor living out a dull existence in bourgeois Brussels. Bullied by her mother, fondly ignored by Albert, her live-in lover, Aline''s life stretches on before her, each day as quiet and conventional as the next. Until, after thirty-five years of suppression, her alter ego wants out. Slipping into the taut, muscled body of a nearby young man, Aline''s second self - Orlanda, as he shall come to be known - takes on a life of his own. As Aline continues with her orderly life, dutifully preparing for classes and listening to Albert''s tedious tales of work, Orlanda follows, dragging gleeful chaos in his wake. In this brilliantly bizarre comedy of androgyny and double selves, Jacqueline Harpman masterfully examines the weird, hidden heart of gender and sexuality.
About the author
Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of SilenceRos Schwartz is an award-winning translator from French. Acclaimed for her new version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, published in 2010, she has over 100 fiction and non-fiction titles to her name.
The French government made Ros a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009, and in 2017 she was awarded the Institute of Translation and Interpreting's John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence.
