Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1998, this book is the work of one of France's most celebrated and interesting novelists writing at the height of her powers. It is fiction that leads readers through fascinating chambers of life where autobiography is constantly reimagined. A darkly comic novel about four women aging less-than-gracefully, Trading Secrets takes us to an academic conference in Kansas where, in an encounter between Aurore, a French woman, and her American counterpart, Gloria, the differences between their two cultures become sharply apparent. The result is a bitingly funny...

After answering a classified ad placed by an import-export company looking for energetic young men willing to take on responsibilities for its African branches no diploma required Victor finds himself on The Will of God, a dilapidated boat heading into the heart of darkness as even Conrad couldn t have imagined. With the piquant mixture of hilarity and painful disenchantment characterizing Paule Constant s vision of the colonial novel, White Spirit follows three innocents Victor; Lola, a mulatto prostitute; and Alexis, who does not know he s a monkey as they negotiate the...