The White Dress

Winner of a 2020 French Voices Award

Fiction. Performance Art. Biography. Memoir. THE WHITE DRESS is the third in Nathalie Léger's award-winning triptych of books about women who "through their oeuvre, transform their lives into a mystery" (ELLE). In EXPOSITION, Léger wrote about the Countess of Castiglione, the most photographed woman of the nineteenth century; in SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN she took up the actress and filmmaker Barbara Loden; here, Léger grapples with the tragic 2008 death of Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and murdered while hiking from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote world peace. A harrowing meditation on the risks women encounter, in life and in art, THE WHITE DRESS also brings to a haunting conclusion Léger's personal interrogation--sustained across all three books--of her relationship with her mother and the desire for justice in our lives.