Astragalus

The cult book of a dazzling comet in the French literary universe, Soulmate of Jean Genet and “little saint of the non-conformist writers,” Albertine Sarrazin (1937–1967) had a life as brief as it was tragic. Abandoned at a tender age in her native Algeria, she knew foster homes and institutions, having occasionally turned to crime and prostitution, and persistently to rebellion and defiance. Arrested for theft in Paris, in 1957 she jumped the prison wall and broke her talus. Her brilliant mind, nourished on Rimbaud’s verses, would give us three novels: The Talus and La Cavale (both published in 1965), written behind bars, and La Traversière (1966). She would experience love alongside Julien Sarrazin, also a former convict, and achieve a fleeting but resounding success. She was “the first woman to speak of her imprisonments,” according to Simone de Beauvoir, and, through the poetic elegance of her pages, denounced like no one else the imprisonments that entangle our days.

The Talus (1965) tells of the young Anne’s permanent escape after jumping the prison walls. Her authentic voice reveals to us a marginal existence, at the mercy of the kindness of strangers, which, after forced confinement, confronts the subtlest imprisonments of everyday life.

Through its lines stained with nicotine and the thirst for life, which blend youthful exuberance with the bas-fonds of Paris and the soul, it is one of the ultimate talismanic books for defiant readers.