Jeanne Cordelier's previously "out of print" books in French are now available as e-books. You can find them all here: portative
Her latest book in French - published 2010
Jeanne Cordelier's latest book, RECONSTRUCTION (in French), may be considered as her memoirs. It tells her story from the year of her literary debut in 1976 until present time. For those readers, and there are lots of them, who only read "The Life", or "La Dérobade", this book is the story of what happened in her life after the success of her first book. It is a book about love, passionate love, and shifts of identity, chosen exile, building a family and learning to fight fears.
The book comes with at preface of Benoîte Groult, who also wrote the preface to the original version of "La Dérobade".
RECONSTRUCTION - in French - is available at amazon France: order Reconstruction.
To read more about the book, French readers may want to visit the French site of Jeanne Cordelier. You will find a presentation in English by the publisher here: Reconstruction - presentation in English
There is no guarantee, of course, that RECONSTRUCTION will be translated into English. It will depend on its fate in France to start with. But we know that it will be translated into Swedish and published in Sweden, the country where Jeanne Cordelier spent more than 17 years. The new Swedish translation of La Dérobade was published in September 2011 and the translation of Reconstruction will be published in the spring of 2012. For information about the Swedish translations, see the Swedish site.
The photo of a pregnant Jeanne Cordelier in 1979 was shot by Brigitte Lacombe, at the time working for Elle magazine, during an interview at Jeanne's home in Stockholm with Colombe Pringle.
Hanoi Blues in English! Bibliographic introduction about the author.
Now available in Kindle edition
"This is a spellbinding story of passion and the politics of fear set in a city in transition. Cordelier brings the streets and waterways of Hanoi alive with accuracy of detail and telling imagery."
The English translation by Marie Ramsland of Hanoi Blues is now available. The novel was written while the French writer Jeanne Cordelier lived in Vietnam. The love story between a French woman reporter and a Vietnamese painter is told within the context of authentic images of daily life in communist Vietnam, exposing the lack of freedom of expression and the abuse of human rights. The book is now available at Abebooks.com , at Alibris.com ,
or from Amazon.com: Hanoi Blues
Here is an excerpt from the Introduction: “Insatiable curiosity and a sensitivity and compassion for the individual and the human condition in the social context are hallmarks of Cordelier’s writings and ensure the reader’s empathy with her fictionalised characters. This is a contemporary author dealing with current issues that touch the lives of people and impact on their destiny and the decisions they take, voluntarily or not.”
Bibliography
Jeanne Cordelier is a Woman Writer, the
French author of La Dérobade,
one of the biggest French best sellers of last century, translated into at least 17 languages (into English by Harry Mathews, with the English title "The Life, memoirs of a French hooker". There is an interesting recent review by a blogger who claims to be a prostitute.). On this site you will find information
on her works in three languages: English, French and Swedish. You will also find a basic biography, her bibliography and information on her current works, including her monthly online words, published in French since March 1999. The literary success
of her first book was remarkable. Her style has been compared to James
Hadley Chase, Jean Genet, Cendrars, "Balzac punk", Villon, Chandler
and others. Her novels are often labeled roman noir. She is the author of French Novels, Short
Stories and Plays. La
Dérobade, her novel about a prostitute's struggle
for freedom, was adapted into a movie with same name (The Get-Away in English). The follow-up of La Dérobade, La Passagère,
is a novel about her time in safe houses in the US, the real story behind
the movie The French Connection. Other themes in her novels are incest (two
books, one a correspondence with a Canadian psychoanalyst, Julien Bigras, - Premier
Bal -, the other a French girl's own story about being the victim of abuse
- La Mort de Blanche-neige), social misery, always with a glimpse
of hope, and human rights. In 2000, she published a love story based
on her own experience from inside communist Vietnam, against the backdrop
of the abuse of human rights in that country. This novel, Hanoi Blues,
is available in English and was recently republished in French. In 2001, she published her first collection
of short stories, a second edition of which was published in 2005. In 2003, Jeanne
Cordelier published a novel about a young man, L'Instruit, fighting
his way back from social exclusion. Critics have emphasized the remarkable
portraits of men by the female author (in for example Malparade, Sang et plumes and L'Instruit).
Theater and Cinema
Jeanne Cordelier is also a playwright.
Her first French play, Camille des Anges, was originally staged in Sweden at the city theatre of Stockholm, directed by Johan Bergenstråhle in 1989. It has since been translated and performed in
Denmark, Finland and Albania. The translation work from French into Albanian was undertaken by Fatos Kongoli, the famous contemporary Albanian writer, based in Tirana. The performance in Tirana was sponsored by USAID Albania as part of its anti-trafficking programme. Jeanne Cordelier herself directed a performance of Camille des Anges in a women penitentiary at Rennes
in France, where the cast was filled by inmates. She has written three more plays, out of which one was performed on radio by the Swedish national radio. The movie based on La Dérobade, The Get-Away, was staged by Daniel Duval with Miou-Miou and Maria Schneider in the major female roles. It was a commercial success in France and is available on DVD.