1988 : Les Grandes Aventurières

by | Updated on 13/09/2024 | Published on 05/08/1988 | 1980-1995 Je ne suis pas née pour mourir, Bibliographies, Fictional biographies

Paris, Vernal/Philippe Lebaud, 234 pages.

For a long time, the term “adventuress” was reserved for what were known as demi-mondaines, i.e. those who, considering marriage to be a wholesale business, chose the retail trade to escape a destiny of submission and reproduction and conquer control of their own destiny.

This is not the type of adventuress we’re talking about here. Françoise gives us a dozen portraits of women who, fighting and battling both on land and at sea, forged a name for themselves and a political or military destiny. Others still, a spiritual destiny. Some of these women were the subject of separate books in Françoise’s oeuvre, such as Isabelle Eberhardt (La Couronne de sable) and Antoinette Lix (L’Amazone sombre).

1986 : Une femme nommée Castor – Mon amie Simone de Beauvoir

by | Updated on 13/09/2024 | Published on 05/08/1986 | 1980-1995 Je ne suis pas née pour mourir, Bibliographies, Literature essays

Paris, Encre, 366 pages.

Shocked by the disappearance of Simone de Beauvoir in 1986, in this book Françoise insisted on describing for us the one whose The Second Sex had marked her so much. The friendship that united them, Beauvoir’s literary work and his intimate relationship with Sartre, as well as the few theoretical disagreements that the two authors may have had are delicately approached. (Alain)

From L’Indicateur du réseau , part still unpublished:

It was during the turbulent period of the various “peace in Algeria” movements (…) that I entered, for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir’s place. I have known and been with since 1947 the author of Second Sex , but I lost sight of her long enough; she will recount our reunion in La Force de l’âge.

1985: Louise Michel la Canaque

by | Updated on 13/09/2024 | Published on 05/08/1985 | 1980-1995 Je ne suis pas née pour mourir, Bibliographies, Fictional biographies

Paris, Encre, 238 pages.

1873. Louise Michel, sentenced to deportation, arrives in New Caledonia, where she will stay for seven years. In this island which was not yet conquered by the military, her fortitude allowed her to find great joy in the luxuriant nature and especially among the Kanak people, she being the only one to support them in 1878 when the former communards joined forces with the jailers to exterminate them. Under the pen of Françoise, Louise finds a life worthy of the exceptional woman she was. (Vincent)