Pretty Things

A pulpy tale of mismatched twins struggling to embody the “perfect woman.”

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Claudine has always been pretty & Pauline has always been ugly. But when Claudine wants to become famous, she convinces gloomy Pauline—with her angelic voice—to pretend they’re the same person. Yet just as things take off, Claudine commits suicide.

Pauline hatches a new scheme, pulling on her dead sister’s identity, inhabiting her apartment, & reading her mail. As the impersonation continues, Pauline slowly realizes that the cost of femininity is to dazzle on the outside while rotting away on the inside—and that womanhood is what ultimately killed her sister.

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Virginie Despentes is a writer & filmmaker. She worked in an independent record store in the early ’90s, was a sex worker, & published her first novel, Baise Moi, when she was twenty-three. She adapted the novel for the screen in 2000, codirecting with the porn star Coralie Trinh Thi. Upon release, it became the first film to be banned in France in twenty-eight years. Despentes is the author of more than fifteen other works, including the Vernon Subutex Trilogy, Apocalypse Baby, Bye Bye Blondie, Pretty Things, & the essay collection King Kong Theory.

Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, & a Fulbright. Her translations include Abdellah Taïa's A Country for Dying, Virginie Despentes's Pretty Things, & Barbara Molinard's Panics.