Winner of the Prix Renaudot
Translated by Linda Asher
Elisabeth, a pensive, memory-laden science professional in a long and tender marriage, has barely befriended their touching younger neighbor when in a fit of blind pain over a scornful scolding the man kills his beloved and appealing wife. Elisabeth is drawn, out of sympathy, to help her sad friend cover up his crime. Her account of her unaccountable impulse moves into a quick-moving, canny police procedural—humor and sorrow, life. An absorbing tale from the skilled hand of playwright/novelist Yasmina Reza.
Playwright and novelist Yasmina Reza's work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Her play Art was the first non-English language play to win a Tony Award, Conversations After a Burial, The Unexpected Man, and Life X 3 have all been award-winning critical and commercial successes internationally, and God of Carnage, which also won a Tony Award, was adapted for film by Roman Polanski. A new play, Bella Figura, premiered in Germany in May 2015. Her fiction includes Hammerklavier, Desolation, and Adam Haberberg. Reza lives in Paris.