Vengeance is Mine

A novel of concentric haunting, summoning ghosts into the room with prose that shimmers, cuts, and sings. Unflinching and restrained, Vengeance is Mine sails its readers into uncharted psychological waters. I was hypnotised from the first word to the last – Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch
In this disquieting, quietly beautiful novel, Marie NDiaye writes about an unimaginable crime placing around it a world of confusion, trauma, and memories of a past that cannot be trusted. There’s more questions than answers in this fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is – Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night
NDiaye balances external and internal revelations to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters, and of what happens when a parent’s unconditional love breaks down – John Self * Guardian *
[NDiaye] is a master at agitating, probing and upending expectations…In ‘Vengeance Is Mine,’ NDiaye circles a familiar configuration of ideas: trauma and memory, class anxiety, isolation and otherness, the warped savagery of domestic life, the rupture between parents and their children. But she also considers the texture of justice - what it means, how it’s determined and who enacts it…Appreciating this moody, sensual and sometimes feverish prose requires submission - to the grooves of language, the performance of storytelling – Lovia Gyarkye * New York Times Book Review *
The magnificence of [NDiaye’s] writing, in all its shocks of perception, makes you feel that by rights her name should come with the same pantheonic glow that attends, say, Annie Ernaux or Elena Ferrante – Hermione Hoby * 4Columns *
The central ideas in “Vengeance Is Mine” are, thrillingly, as difficult to pin down as the identities of its characters. In one light, it’s a scathing look at the simmering desperation provoked by France’s rigid structures of authority and power. But it’s also an uber-feminist rewriting of a plot made familiar by texts from “Medea” to Leïla Slimani’s bestseller “The Perfect Nanny” (2018) [published as “Lullaby” in the UK], in which oppression, writ large, drives a woman to horrifying violence against the children in her care. And, read in a less outraged mood, it’s just a quiet book about a quiet woman, quietly fragmenting - no more, no less…[NDiaye] is a poet of uncertainty. Her ability to simultaneously embody all the fractured parts of a character’s mind makes aspects of Susane’s spiral that might otherwise seem unbelievable - can she really not know whether she is the mother of Rudy’s child? - come across as engrossingly, utterly human * Washington Post *
In her novels, Ndiaye plunges her characters, usually women, into a visceral experience of difference, often without naming what that difference is… her texts still inspire a paranoia about how to read her protagonists, catching us in a game of complicity * Vulture, New York Magazine *
A haunting, mysterious tour de force – Lucy Scholes * Prospect *
Vengeance Is Mine might present an answer to how the “trauma plot” - in which a character works through a damaging experience from their past - can remain fresh * Financial Times *
The result is a complex knot of guilt, fear and obsession, which compresses a great deal into 240 pages without ever seeming clotted – John Self * Guardian *
NDiaye’s award-winning writing is dreamy, elusive, and brilliant, shifting genres and forms…Vengeance is Mine is, to my mind, one of NDiaye’s very best novels, with a devastating plot and a continual sense of surprise. It rewards repeat reading and careful attention – Adam Dalva * Words Without Borders *
NDiaye’s award-winning writing is dreamy, elusive, and brilliant, shifting genres and forms…Vengeance is Mine is, to my mind, one of NDiaye’s very best novels, with a devastating plot and a continual sense of surprise. It rewards repeat reading and careful attention – Adam Dalva * Words Without Borders *

Marie NDiaye was born in France in 1967. She published her first novel at seventeen, and has won the Prix Femina (Rosie Carpe in 2001) and the Prix Goncourt (Three Strong Women, 2009). Her play “Papa Doit Manger” has been taken into the repertoire of the Comedie Fran aise. Her novel Ladivine (translated by Jordan Stump) was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2016, and in 2020 she was awarded the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar for her entire body of work. She lives in Paris.

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