Anne Serre
The author of fourteen books, Anne Serre was born in 1960. Her first novel, Les Gouvernantes, was published in 1992 and praised by La Croix for its “remarkable economy of style.”
Her books that have been translated into English—The Governesses, The Fool and Other Moral Tales and The Beginners—have a glamour in the older sense of the word, that of witchcraft. These are books that, in their concern with the properties of fiction—plots, narrator, genre, characters—use these very elements to beguile.
The author of fourteen books, Anne Serre was born in 1960. Her first novel, Les Gouvernantes, was published in 1992 and praised by La Croix for its “remarkable economy of style.”
Her books that have been translated into English—The Governesses, The Fool and Other Moral Tales and The Beginners—have a glamour in the older sense of the word, that of witchcraft. These are books that, in their concern with the properties of fiction—plots, narrator, genre, characters—use these very elements to beguile.
Serre’s collection speaks bravely, poignantly and perversely to the hazards of alienation — from one’s self, from those around you — while also illuminating the blessings and curses, the gifts and sacrifices, of being called to dwell in the gauzy world of stories.
With its psychological reality infused with fabulism, Serre’s fiction seems to have invented its own genre of literature. The Fool & Other Moral Tales is an impeccable collection.
From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.
Three surreal, fairy-tale infused tales, translated from the French, all of them playful, odd, and definitely exploratory.
Drawing on fairy tales and psychoanalysis, pornography and poststructuralism, Serre constructs stunning and searing stories. Dreamy and deeply sexual.
A feminist fantasy, where women satisfy their sexual needs free from society’s opprobrium.
Genuinely original—and, often, very quietly so. Seriously weird and seriously excellent…call it the anglerfish of literature.