Mauve Desert

Mauve Desert is both a single novel and three separate novels in one. In the first, Mauve Desert, 15-year-old Mélanie drives across the Arizona desert in a white Meteor chasing fear and desire, cutting loose from her mother and her mother’s lover Lorna in their roadside Mauve Motel. In the second book, Maude Laures reads Mauve Desert, becomes obsessed with it, and embarks on an extraordinary quest for its mysterious author, characters and meaning. The third book – Mauve, the Horizon – is Laures’ eventual translation of Mauve Desert. Like all good translations, it is both the same and revealingly different from the original. Nicole Brossard’s writing is agile and inventive; from moment to moment gripping, exhilarating and erotic.