Pretty Things

Claudine has always been pretty and Pauline has always been ugly. But whenClaudine wants to become famous, she enlists gloomy Pauline—withher angelicvoice—intopretending they’re the same person. Yet just as things take off,Claudine commits suicide. Pauline hatches a new scheme, pulling on her deadsister’s identity, inhabiting her apartment, and reading her mail. As the impersonationcontinues, Pauline slowly realizes that the cost of femininity is to dazzle onthe outside while rotting away on the inside—andthat womanhood is what ultimatelykilled her sister.

Virginie Despentes is an award-winning author and filmmaker and a noted French feminist and cultural critic. She is the author of many award-winning books, including Apocalypse Baby (winner of the 2010 Prix Renaudot) and Vernon Subutex (winner of the Anaïs-Nin Prize 2015, Prix Landerneau 2015, Prix La Coupole 2015). She also codirected the screen adaptations of her controversial novels Baise-Moi and Bye Bye Blondie.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator. She translates from Providence, Rhode Island, where she is also co-owner of Riffraff bookstore and bar. Her translations include Sphinx and Not One Day by Anne Garréta, Monospace by Anne Parian, and The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers by Fouad Laroui. She is a recipient of a 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant for her translation from the French of Ahmed Bouanani’s The Shutters.