OUREGANO: A Novel (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

Paule Constant's OUREGANO, originally published in France in 1980, received the Prix Valéry Larbaud and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. The novel is a scathing indictment of the self-absorbed consciousness responsible for individual and collective social failure in 1950s central Africa. The narrative threads through the minds of its diverse characters―French and African, young and old―with a sharp needle, skewering the contradictions between intent and action. At its heart is Tiffany Murano, who with her parents arrives at this fictional French colonial outpost where her father is named the hospital's chief medical officer. Bitter, sometimes hilariously funny, and ultimately achingly sad, the novel not only traces seven-year-old Tiffany's development of identity, loss, and memory but also serves as a massive critique of colonialism. OUREGANO was Constant's first novel. Since its publication she has gained fame in France for her disturbing, anticolonial, and feminist writing. Her characters do not just represent the particular condition of the feminine; in fact, Constant insists on the value of female characters to express the full human condition. OUREGANO is essential to an appreciation of Constant's oeuvre as it lays out themes and establishes key scenes she develops in later novels, and it introduces characters who reappear in subsequent books (some of which are available in translation). In this first English-language edition of OUREGANO, Claudine Fisher provides a concise introduction to Constant, including biographical details, literary influences, and key themes. With her elegant and poetic translation Margot Miller renders the novel accessible to all readers, adding helpful annotation to explain unfamiliar or untranslatable terms.

Literature & Fiction

Constant, Paule

Contemporary

Lexington Books

Paule Constant's OUREGANO, originally published in France in 1980, received the Prix ValZry Larbaud and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. The novel is a scathing indictment of the self-absorbed consciousness responsible for individual and collective social failure in 1950s central Africa. The narrative threads through the minds of its diverse characters--French and African, young and old--with a sharp needle, skewering the contradictions between intent and action. At its heart is Tiffany Murano, who with her parents arrives at this fictional French colonial outpost where her father is named the hospital's chief medical officer. Bitter, sometimes hilariously funny, and ultimately achingly sad, the novel not only traces seven-year-old Tiffany's development of identity, loss, and memory but also serves as a massive critique of colonialism. OUREGANO was Constant's first novel. Since its publication she has gained fame in France for her disturbing, anticolonial, and feminist writing. Her characters do not just represent the particular condition of the feminine; in fact, Constant insists on the value of female characters to express the full human condition. OUREGANO is essential to an appreciation of Constant's oeuvre as it lays out themes and establishes key scenes she develops in later novels, and it introduces characters who reappear in subsequent books (some of which are available in translation). In this first English-language edition of OUREGANO, Claudine Fisher provides a concise introduction to Constant, including biographical details, literary influences, and key themes. With her elegant and poetic translation Margot Miller renders the novel accessible to all readers, adding helpful annotation to explain unfamiliar or untranslatable terms.

Literary

The Governor’s Daughter is an extraordinary tale of innocence adrift in a monstrous world. Set just after World War I in the French penal colony in Cayenne, French Guiana, it is the story of Chrétienne, the seven-year-old daughter of the colony’s governor and his obsessively devout wife, whom the convicts acidly call the “Mother of God.” Chrétienne’s disarmingly clear view of the adults with whom she lives—her pious parents and the notorious convicts in their charge—is both hilarious and harrowing. Her parents, driven by their desire for sainthood, subject Chrétienne and the prisoners alike to inhuman rigors and coldness. Denied it by her family, the child finds human contact among the convicts, especially the Chinese murderer Tang. Pervading all is the grotesque yet fascinating atmosphere of the penal colony and its colonial setting—an atmosphere that we discover through the alert, inquisitive consciousness of a young girl. Constant’s portrayal of Chrétienne and her frightening life in the penal colony is unforgettable—the work of a major literary, and satiric, talent.The Governor’s Daughter is one of the most acclaimed French novels of recent years.

The Governor's Daughter (European Women Writers)

University Of Nebraska Press

Trading Secrets (European Women Writers)

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 portrait of painfully complex, psychologically damaged individuals, all of whom have been, in some sense, "colonized." The novel also offers an incisive picture of a French posture toward things American, from race relations to feminism to academia. As Paule Constant herself has said: "C'est un livre en miroir." The book is a mirror, both in how its characters reflect one another and in what it shows us of ourselves and our world.

The Governor’s Daughter is an extraordinary tale of innocence adrift in a monstrous world. Set just after World War I in the French penal colony in Cayenne, French Guiana, it is the story of Chrétienne, the seven-year-old daughter of the colony’s governor and his obsessively devout wife, whom the convicts acidly call the “Mother of God.” Chrétienne’s disarmingly clear view of the adults with whom she lives—her pious parents and the notorious convicts in their charge—is both hilarious and harrowing. Her parents, driven by their desire for sainthood, subject Chrétienne and the prisoners alike to inhuman rigors and coldness. Denied it by her family, the child finds human contact among the convicts, especially the Chinese murderer Tang. Pervading all is the grotesque yet fascinating atmosphere of the penal colony and its colonial setting—an atmosphere that we discover through the alert, inquisitive consciousness of a young girl. Constant’s portrayal of Chrétienne and her frightening life in the penal colony is unforgettable—the work of a major literary, and satiric, talent.The Governor’s Daughter is one of the most acclaimed French novels of recent years.

Bison Books

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 portrait of painfully complex, psychologically damaged individuals, all of whom have been, in some sense, "colonized." The novel also offers an incisive picture of a French posture toward things American, from race relations to feminism to academia. As Paule Constant herself has said: "C'est un livre en miroir." The book is a mirror, both in how its characters reflect one another and in what it shows us of ourselves and our world.

Genre Fiction

Paule Constant's OUREGANO, originally published in France in 1980, received the Prix Valery Larbaud and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Goncourt. The novel is a scathing indictment of the self-absorbed consciousness responsible for individual and collective social failure in 1950s central Africa. The narrative threads through the minds of its diverse characters French and African, young and old with a sharp needle, skewering the contradictions between intent and action. At its heart is Tiffany Murano, who with her parents arrives at this fictional French colonial outpost where her father is named the hospital's chief medical officer. Bitter, sometimes hilariously funny, and ultimately achingly sad, the novel not only traces seven-year-old Tiffany's development of identity, loss, and memory but also serves as a massive critique of colonialism. OUREGANO was Constant's first novel. Since its publication she has gained fame in France for her disturbing, anticolonial, and feminist writing. Her characters do not just represent the particular condition of the feminine; in fact, Constant insists on the value of female characters to express the full human condition. OUREGANO is essential to an appreciation of Constant's oeuvre as it lays out themes and establishes key scenes she develops in later novels, and it introduces characters who reappear in subsequent books (some of which are available in translation). In this first English-language edition of OUREGANO, Claudine Fisher provides a concise introduction to Constant, including biographical details, literary influences, and key themes. With her elegant and poetic translation Margot Miller renders the novel accessible to all readers, adding helpful annotation to explain unfamiliar or untranslatable terms.

Ouregano

Фоліо

La fille du Gobernator

Confidence pour confidence

Gallimard]

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Books by Constant, Paule

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Constant, Paule. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

OUREGANO: A Novel (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

OUREGANO: A Novel (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

The Governor's Daughter (European Women Writers)

Trading Secrets (European Women Writers)

The Governor's Daughter (European Women Writers)

Trading Secrets (European Women Writers)

Ouregano

La fille du Gobernator

Confidence pour confidence

La fille du Gobernator