Paris (AFP)
The unpublished diaries of the American novelist Patricia Highsmith will be published in French at the beginning of November, announced the Parisian editor Calmann-Lévy, which precedes the publication in English.
"Les Ecrits intimes de Patricia Highsmith, 1941-1995" will be released on November 3, while the American (Liveright) and British (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) editions will wait on November 16.
This volume of 1,200 pages in French contains the 18 diary notebooks and 38 work notebooks discovered after the death of the author of "L'Inconnu du Nord-Express".
"They contain the intimate, savage, poignant and contradictory life of the author, as well as poems, lists of places where she has traveled, novels in progress and the most important figures in her eyes", summarizes Calmann. -Lévy in its program of publications.
One of the peculiarities of the diaries and notes is that they were partly written in French, a language the Texan spoke fluently, having lived in France and Switzerland.
All foreign language passages (along with others in German, Italian and Spanish) were intended as a "code" to discourage curiosity.
The rights holders had unveiled some of the content of these newspapers in 2019 to the New York Times, explaining that they would not hide its less glorious sides.
Patricia Highsmith "could be blinded by her own bigotry and had adopted racist and anti-Semitic positions," the daily wrote.
He added that among the "recurring themes" was the difficulty of flourishing in a society which severely condemned homosexuality.
The year 2021 marks the centenary of Patricia Highsmith, a novelist who enjoyed immense success with noir novels like the adventures of Tom Ripley, and works that explore the inner conflicts of women like "Carol" or "The Journal of Edith ".
The rights to the book have been sold for translations into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, the publication date of which is not known.
© 2021 AFP