Author Description

‘A luminous tale about the courage of the lone female artist.’ Joan London Born in Germany in 1876, Paula Modersohn-Becker was the first female artist to paint herself not only naked but pregnant. Being Here is a moving account of the life of this ground-breaking Expressionist painter, by the acclaimed French writer Marie Darrieussecq. As her art evolves, Paula is torn between Paris and her home in northern Germany. In Paris she can focus on her work, and mix with artists like Rodin and Monet, or her close friend the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. But Germany is home, and that’s where her painter husband Otto lives. Darrieussecq thrillingly describes Paula’s discovery of her style and choice of subjects—women, babies, domestic life. She tells the story of her fraught marriage, her ambivalence about combining her passion for her career as an artist with motherhood. And she recounts her tragic death at thirty-one, days after giving birth. Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969 and and is recognized as one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. In 2013 she was awarded the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix. Text publishes her three most recent novels, Tom Is Dead, All the Way and Men, as well as Being Here, The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker. ‘Marie Darrieussecq reads the testament of Modersohn-Becker—the letters, the diaries, and above all the paintings—with a burning intelligence and a fierce hold on what it meant and means to be a woman and an artist.’ J.M. Coetzee ‘There are few writers who may have changed my perception of the world, but Darrieussecq is one of them.’ The Times ‘The internationally celebrated author who illuminates those parts of life other writers cannot or do not want to reach.’ Independent ‘Penny Hueston’s tran