Description
WINNER OF THE PRIX ANAIS NIN Following a woman named Jeanne through the anonymous hotel rooms of Paris, this novel is a candid exploration of sexuality, desire and compulsion
About the Author
Nina Leger was born in 1988 in Antibes. Her first novel, Histoire naturelle, was published in 2014. Mise en pieces (published in English as The Collection), her second novel, won the Anais Nin Prize. Laura Francis was born in Bristol in 1992. She studied in St. Andrews, Paris and London, where she now lives. This is her first translation.
Reviews
[T]ranslator Laura Francis does a fine job of capturing Leger's poise and poetry... t's a reminder of how rare it still is to have a female gaze on the aesthetic aspects of sex... Leger's writing is doing something different...cool, detached, specific... Genuinely fresh * Observer *
A sustained assault on the authority of the phallus. . . Like a flickering pornographic video breaking up into pixels, [Jeanne] dissolves before us. . . In being nobody in particular, she can be anybody. . . there is a serious argument here * Sunday Times *
[The Collection is a] provocative novel...creating a new kind of sex writing, in the surreal shapes and syntax of a direct yet viscous, particulate prose. . . In Laura Francis's supple translation, Leger's novel challenges, mesmerises, and impresses... it knowingly complicates its genre, offering a tantalising glimpse of a female desire unburdened by the debt of explanation...daring, direct and richly imagined * Arts Desk *
Utterly brilliant. I love how Leger has taken a depersonalised perspective to open up such an intimate subject - this intrinsically erotic disparity has produced a completely fresh cliche-free kind of sex writing -- Claire-Louise Bennett
With her unapologetic, searching heroine, and her refusal to answer 'why', Nina Leger opens up spaces of possibility in the reader. She draws us into a complex world of pleasure with a language as striking and sharp as the erotic imagination at play is tender, vulnerable and wild -- Saskia Vogel
I revelled in Jeanne's mesmeric, nihilistic sex life. The Collection is filled with slight-of-hand sensuality. Choreographic in its treatment of the gendered gaze -- Eli Goldstone
Leger's rendering of Jeanne's penile preoccupation is virtuosic and precise while also surprising, even surrealist. . .The Collection is short and focused... [Leger's] book is urgently necessary: because there are still men out there who don't understand how rare and revolutionary it is for a woman to write about what their penises look like to her. For a woman to adopt the surrealist approach, and show, for once, a man in pieces * Guardian *
[A] bold, mischievous novel. . . truly fresh. . . a distinctive and evocative novel. . . A book for adventurous readers * Dublin Sunday Business Post *
I am gripped by its weirdness...Jeanne's insatiable libido and darkly comic fixation on grotesque penises in The Collection defy the patriarchal archetype of female desire * frieze *
Book Information
ISBN 9781846276866
Author Nina Leger
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Granta Books
Publisher Granta Books
Weight(grams) 115g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 130mm * 10mm