From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men, a groundbreaking novel about a woman whose subconscious mind splinters and finds itself in the body of a young man.
Now in paperback with a new afterword by Isle McElroy for the 30th anniversary of its original publication.
One afternoon in a café across the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, Aline Berger, a literature professor, struggles to re-read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, when an odd feeling comes over her. Suddenly, part of her consciousness splits off and finds itself in the body of an attractive young man named Lucien Lèfrene, who works as a rock journalist. In this newfound body, Aline’s splintered mind names themselves Orlanda in homage to Virginia Woolf as a woman who has now become a man.
Orlanda begins to follow Aline. And when the two meet again in Belgium, Aline subconsciously sheds her prim tendencies for a more assertive presence, as she begins to understand that Orlanda was born from her own psyche. Orlanda is the assertive, confident, and amorous person, who loves men unabashedly, that Aline has always aspired to be but could never become. The more time the two spend together, the less time they can stand to be apart.
Jacqueline Harpman's lyrical novel is a stunning portrait of a woman who is forced to confront every part of her soul and embrace herself fully.
Collected in
New and Forthcoming Books from Seven Stories Press
JACQUELINE HARPMAN (1929–2012) was born in Etterbeek, Belgium. Her family moved to Casablanca to avoid persecution when the Nazis invaded, and returned home after the war. After studying French literature Harpman began training to be a doctor, but became unable to complete her medical studies after contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954, and her first book was published in 1958. In 1980 Harpman qualified as a psychoanalyst and continued to practice throughout her life. She had given up writing after her fourth book was published in 1966, and resumed her career as a novelist only some twenty years later. Harpman wrote over 15 novels including I Who Have Never Known Men, and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis for Orlanda.
Over the past forty years, award-winning translator ROS SCHWARTZ has over a hundred works of fiction and nonfiction to her name, from writers such as Tahar Ben Jelloun, Andrée Chedid, Aziz Chouaki, Fatou Diome, Dominique Eddé, Georges Simenon and Simone Weil. Her new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince was published in 2010 and shortlisted for the Marsh Award. In 2009, she was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. A Fellow of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, she was awarded the 2017 John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence.
