Panics
Barbara Molinard
Translated by Emma Ramadan

‘An extraordinary, exhilarating collection.’
– TLS

'Through Ramadan’s spare and exacting translation, Molinard presents a terrifying portrait of violence and mental illness.'
—The New York Times

'Startling and surreal... Ramadan’s translation is a great gift to readers.'
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

'Dispensing with the ordinary rules of time, space, and motivation that govern our everyday, [Molinard] calls into question just what it means to be human.'
—BOMB Magazine

A haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience.

A close friend and protégé of Marguerite Duras, Barbara Molinard (1921–1986) wrote and wrote feverishly, but only managed to publish one book in her lifetime: the surreal, nightmarish collection Panics.

These thirteen stories beat with a frantic, off-kilter rhythm as Molinard obsesses over sickness, death, and control. A woman becomes transfixed by a boa constrictor at her local zoo, mysterious surgeons dismember their patient, and the author narrates to Duras how she was stopped from sleeping in a cemetery vault, only to be haunted by the pain of sleeping on its stone floor.

In the unsettling tradition of Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, Leonora Carrington, and more, Panics recovers the work of a tormented writer who often destroyed her writing as soon as she produced it, and whose insights into violence, mental illness, and bodily autonomy are simultaneously absurdist and razor-sharp.

About the Author

Barbara Molinard (1921–1986) wrote and wrote, but published only one book in her lifetime. Everything she wrote, she immediately tore to shreds; it was only through the relentless urging from her husband, the filmmaker Patrice Molinard, and her friend Marguerite Duras, that she finally handed over a single collection of stories, Viens, to Éditions Mercure de France in 1969.

About the translator

Emma Ramadan translates books of all genres from French. Her translations include Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things, and Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying. 

Paperback ISBN: 9781914391408

Ebook ISBN: 9781914391415

Publication date: October 2024

Formats: Paperback / eBook