Adèle by Leila Slimani, translated from the French by Sam Taylor. Penguin, 216 pp., $16.00 (paper)
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, translated from the French by Sam Taylor. Penguin, 228 pp., $9.99 (paper)
Sex and Lies by Leila Slimani, translated from the French by Sophie Lewis. Penguin, 162 pp., $17.00 (paper)
Le Pays des Autres: Première Partie: La guerre, la guerre, la guerre by Leila Slimani. Paris: Gallimard, 365 pp., €20.00 (paper)
The women in Leila Slimani’s novels are unhappy. The men are dissatisfied too, but they are secondary, more oblivious characters. The women are unhappy because their husbands don’t understand them, because their children are a burden on them, and because their existence strikes them as humiliatingly humdrum. They love those husbands and children, but their joy in…
