Novel
On a Woman's Madness
Over de gekte van een vrouw
Astrid Roemer · 1982
Synopsis
In Suriname, Noenka, a young black woman and a schoolteacher, leaves her husband after nine days of marriage, and he refuses her a divorce. She then leaves her town for the capital, Paramaribo, where she discovers new freedoms: an affair with Ramses, a grower of orchids, then love for Gabriëlle, a married white woman. Made of fragments that move back and forth between childhood and the present, the novel follows a woman who collides with the expectations of her family and of society.
Context
The book appeared in 1982 in Haarlem from In de Knipscheer, at the time of the wave of feminist literature in the Netherlands, and sold more than forty thousand copies. Critics were divided: Rabin Gangadin saw in it a new impetus for Surinamese literature, while Jos de Roo and Ab Visser rejected it. The author specified that the facts of the book are not autobiographical, but that its emotions are her own. Reread today as a classic of queer literature, it was translated into English by Lucy Scott in 2023.
Who it is for
For reading the great Surinamese novel of women's emancipation, translated into English but not into French.
Prizes and reception
Its English translation was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, then longlisted for the International Booker.
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