French writer Marie Chaix, is the author of nine books. In The Laurels of Lake Constance, she traced the life of her collaborationist father and of her family during the postwar years. She considered her mother’s experience inSilences, or a Woman’s Life. The Summer of the Elder Tree, a memoir and meditation on the theme of separation, was published in Paris in 2005, her first book to appear in fourteen years. All three titles are available from Dalkey Archive Press in English translations by Harry Mathews.

 Born in Manhattan, Harry Mathews moved to France in 1953. A poet and the author of six novels, he was for many years the only American member of the OuLiPo group. His most recent novel isMy Life in C.I.A. He has translated three works by Marie Chaix, his wife of many years, as well as Georges Bataille's Blue of Noon, Jeanne Cordelier's The Life: Memoirs of a French Hooker,Raymond Roussel's The Dust of Suns, and Georges Perec's Ellis Island.

Emmanuelle Ertel is Clinical Associate Professor of French at NYU, and the director of the French Department’s Master of Arts in Literary Translation program. Her translations into French include works by Louis Begley, Rick Moody, and Tom Perrotta.

External Link »