Novel
Women
Femmes
Philippe Sollers · 1983
Synopsis
Will, an American journalist based in Paris, a freethinker and a womaniser, is writing a novel about women, who he maintains run the world. To protect those close to him, he asks S., a French novelist, to publish it under his name. In it he recounts his affairs with women of several nationalities and sketches, under assumed names, the leading intellectual figures of the moment, a psychoanalyst, a philosopher or a critic, amid digressions on literature, religion, politics and travel.
Context
The novel appeared from Gallimard in 1983. After a series of experimental texts reputed to be difficult, its author returned in it to a more accessible and more realistic form. It is a roman à clef: readers have recognised in it Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes, and Sollers himself under the initial S. The book was a success in France, while part of the critical establishment reproached it for its misogyny.
Who it is for
A long, digressive novel, a satire of the Parisian intellectual milieu; part of the pleasure lies in recognising the models.
Prizes and reception
Translated into English by Barbara Bray, it was published in 1990 by Columbia University Press under the title Women.
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