Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between

Ann Jefferson

Published by Princeton University Press 2020

Nathalie Sarraute

A Life Between

Ann Jefferson

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691201924

Overview
Contents

About this book

The definitive biography of a leading twentieth-century French writer

A leading exponent of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) was also one of France's most cosmopolitan literary figures, and her life was bound up with the intellectual and political ferment of twentieth-century Europe. Ann Jefferson's Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between is the authoritative biography of this major writer.

Sarraute's life spanned a century and a continent. Born in tsarist Russia to Jewish parents, she was soon uprooted and brought to the city that became her lifelong home, Paris. This dislocation presaged a life marked by ambiguity and ambivalence. A stepchild in two families, a Russian émigré in Paris, a Jew in bourgeois French society, and a woman in a man’s literary world, Sarraute was educated at Oxford, Berlin, and the Sorbonne. She embarked on a career in law that was ended by the Nazi occupation of France, and she spent much of the war in hiding, under constant threat of exposure. Rising to literary eminence after the Liberation, she was initially associated with the existentialist circle of Beauvoir and Sartre, before becoming the principal theorist and practitioner of the avant-garde French novel of the 1950s and 1960s. Her tireless exploration of the deepest parts of our inner psychological life produced an oeuvre that remains daringly modern and resolutely unclassifiable.

Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between explores Sarraute's work and the intellectual, social, and political context from which it emerged. Drawing on newly available archival material and Sarraute's letters, this deeply researched biography is the definitive account of a life lived between countries, families, languages, literary movements, and more.

Author / Editor information

Ann Jefferson is professor emerita of French at the University of Oxford and the author of several books on French literature and culture, including Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses (Princeton).

Reviews

"A magnificent achievement: fascinating, readable, exhaustive. It is the definitive biography this important literary figure deserves."—Elisabeth Ladenson, author of Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from "Madame Bovary" to "Lolita"

"Ann Jefferson's biography of Nathalie Sarraute is impeccably researched and elegantly written. The reader turns the final pages with sorrow and regret—both that Sarraute's life is over, and that this marvelous book has come to an end."—Alice Kaplan, author of Looking for "The Stranger": Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Between Worlds, 1900–21
Chapter one. Russian Childhoods, 1900–05 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
Chapter two. Between Petersburg and Paris, 1905–11 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Chapter three. Schooldays, 1912–18 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
Chapter four. England, 1919–21 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
Chapter five. Berlin, 1921–22 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter six. Pierre Janet’s Patient, 1922 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Tentative Beginnings, 1922–44
Chapter seven. Independence, 1922–25 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Chapter eight. Raymond Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Chapter nine. Coming of Age with Modernism, 1923–27 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Chapter ten. Marriage and Motherhood, 1925–33 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
Chapter twelve. A Pause, 1935–37 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Chapter thirteen. Publication, 1938–39 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Chapter fourteen. Jewish by Decree, 1939–42 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
Chapter fifteen In Hiding, 1942–44 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Ambivalent Allegiances, 1944–58
Chapter sixteen. Saint-Germain- des- Prés, 1944–47 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Chapter seventeen. The Elephant’s Child, 1947–49 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Chapter eighteen. New Horizons, 1949–53 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
Chapter nineteen. A Gallimard Author, 1953–56 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Chapter twenty. The Nouveau Roman, 1956–59 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Golden Fruits, 1959–70
Chapter twenty-one. “One of the Great Novelists of Our Time,” 1959–62 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Chapter twenty-two. Nathalie Abroad, 1959–64 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Chapter twenty-three. A Reading Public, 1963–66 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Chapter twenty-four. Friendships Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Chapter twenty-five. “The Heroine of Post-Stalin Russia,” 1960–67 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Chapter twenty-six. Radio Plays, 1962–72 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	296
Chapter twenty-seven. The Writing Life, 1964–68 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	304
Chapter twenty-eight. Revolution and May 68 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Chapter twenty-nine. Israel, 1969 In Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318
Chapter thirty. The End and Afterlife of the Nouveau Roman, 1971–82 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
Chapter thirty-one. Plays on Stage, 1972–88 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343
Chapter thirty-two. A Life and a Death, 1983–89 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	352
Chapter thirty-three. The Last Decade, 1990–99 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	363
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	381
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	413
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417