Wittig, Monique
Entry updated 19 June 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1935-2003) French author, in US from 1976, whose first novel with sf interest, Les Guérillères (1969; trans David Le Vay as Les Guérillères 1971), transforms the arguments of Feminism into a series of narrative litanies that work movingly to describe an abstract "tribe" of lesbian Amazons in a constant state of warfare with their natural enemy; the novel balances Equipoisally between sf (when its images are taken literally) and poetry. In Virgile, Non (1985; trans David Le Vay as Across the Acheron 1987), Dante Alighieri's Inferno is taken as a model of destructive patriarchy, and a deadly threat to any lesbian (a category which Wittig uses to designate a condition beyond the binary oppositions of our "normal" state) future; the protagonist (whose name is Wittig) discovers on her tour that Hell has been renamed San Francisco (see California). [JC]
see also: Women SF Writers.
Monique Wittig
born Dannemarie, Haut-Rhin, France: 13 July 1935
died Tucson, Arizona: 3 January 2003
works
- Les Guérillères (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1969) [binding unknown/]
- Les Guérillères (New York: Viking, 1971) [trans by David Le Vay of the above: hb/]
- Virgile, Non (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1985) [binding unknown/]
- Across the Acheron (London: Peter Owen, 1987) [trans by David Le Vay and Margaret Crosland of the above: hb/Keith Cunningham]
nonfiction
- The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1992) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
links
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