Meeting with Christine Angot

Christine Angot, author of a dozen books that have made her a major figure on the French literary scene, reads excerpts from her latest novel Le Marché des amants (Editions du Seuil).

Le Marché des amants is a contemporary romance set in modern-day Paris. Two people, a man and a woman, meet, fall in love, and are forced, happily, to plunge into each other’s world. He’s black, she’s white. One might think that there’s a black world on one side, and a white world on the other. Above all, it’s a novel about miscegenation. He’s mixed-race because his father is white, and she’s mixed-race because her father is rich and her mother is poor. A “métis” is someone who brings together two opposing things within himself, and would like to bring them together in society too. The title refers to the values attributed to humans according to what they possess or know. The novel asks how these values govern the attractions between people in a compartmentalized society.

Christine Angot has been publishing since 1990. She writes mainly novels, but also plays and short texts. She has collaborated on stage with Alain Françon and Mathilde Monnier. She is the author of a dozen novels, including L’Inceste (Stock, 1999) and Rendez-vous (Flammarion, 2006).