Constance Debré

At the age of forty-three, the narrator abandons her marriage, her apartment, and her successful legal career as a public defender to re-emerge as an out lesbian and a writer. In a series of short, sharp vignettes, the narrator describes her first female lovers—a married woman fifteen years older than her, a model ten years her junior—punctuated by encounters with...

Debré's voice is Camusian, comic, stark, relentless, and totally hypnotic. — Rachel Kushner Is a criminal born or made? What turns them towards violence? A young man stabs an elderly woman ten times for the sake of a 450 euro debt. But why would he commit such a brutal murder over a petty sum when he has a girlfriend and...

'Destined to become a classic of its kind' - Maggie Nelson 'One of the most compulsive voices I've read in years' - Olivia Laing, Observer When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to...

In the world of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats, names are everything. They are currency that cannot be bartered but give their owners access, respect and, above all, protection from the laws that govern those unfortunate souls who belong to classes without names, people who might as well be nameless. To the narrator of Constance Debré's third novel, Name, her name...