Violette Leduc

Diagnoses

Personal

Passions

Vocation

French author of autobiography and fiction. In 1942 she met Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir, who encouraged her to write. Her first novel, L'Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin), was published by Albert Camus for Éditions Gallimard and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. In 1955 Leduc was forced to remove part of her novel Ravages because of sexually explicit passages describing lesbianism. The censored part was eventually published as a separate novella, Thérèse and Isabelle, in 1966. Another novel, Le Taxi, caused controversy because of its depiction of incest between a brother and sister. Critic Edith J. Benkov compared this novel with the work of Marguerite Duras and Nathalie Sarraute. Leduc's best-known book, the memoir La Bâtarde, was published in 1964. It nearly won the Prix Goncourt and quickly became a bestseller. She went on to write eight more books, including La Folie en tête (Mad in Pursuit), the second part of her literary autobiography. In 1968 Radley Metzger made a film of Leduc's novel Thérèse and Isabelle. The film was a commercial feature about adolescent lesbian love, starring Essy Persson and Anna Gael. Leduc died at Faucon, Vaucluse of breast cancer on 28 May 1972 at the age of 65 after two operations. She was played by Emmanuelle Devos in Violette, a 2013 French drama film about her life. Link to Wikipedia biography