Darrieussecq, Marie

Marie Darrieussecq was born and raised in Bayonne in the Basque Country region of south-west France. Her mother was a primary school teacher and her father an engineer. Politics and history were never discussed within the family, which is one of the reasons why she turned to writing. Even as a six-year-old Darrieussecq knew that she wanted to be an author. She was an avid reader, she began to focus on literature at school, and she went on to become a qualified secondary-school teacher. While at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Bordeaux she studied Roland Barthes, and after graduating she taught French literature, specializing in Stendhal and Proust.