In The Witch, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own.
In This Spotlight On The Witch
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About The Witch
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, with powers passed down from mother to daughter. Many of them have hidden or repressed their gifts to appease disgusted or fearful men. But against the wishes of her controlling husband, Lucie initiates her twins into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach the age of twelve. In a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying rich crimson tears, their powers quickly becoming more potent than their mother’s, opening them to liberation and euphoria beyond what Lucie and her foremothers ever considered.
Equal parts dreamlike and disquieting, The Witch tells a tale as old as time, with a dark twist: Without looking back, children fly the nest, laying bare the tenuous threads of family that have long threatened to snap. With simmering tension and increasing panic, NDiaye’s latest novel in English captures the terror and precarity of motherhood and marriage, and the uncertainty of slowly realizing that your progeny are more dangerous—to the world and to your heart—and freer than you ever could have dreamed.
Marie NDiaye is in the middle of an American renaissance. Her last book, Vengeance Is Mine, was her best-selling, most-reviewed yet; spurring interest and backlist sales, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a Best Book of the Year at The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. For this exciting first English publication of The Witch, we already have interest from The Paris Review, which will run both an excerpt and Writers at Work interview.
The Witch is one of NDiaye’s best loved and most read books in France but it has never before appeared in English. NDiaye’s last book was filled with stomach-knotting suspense and a dark storyline. The Witch is much more accessible in tone, funny, ironic, and relatable, yet in its underlying currents never compromises on any of the trademark open-ended eeriness, absurdity, and rage that NDiaye fans have come to crave. As gothic as it is whimsical, there is a reason The Witch is one of her most successful books in her native France.
Praise for The Witch
“The Witch is Marie NDiaye at her most dazzling. In this simple, startlingly powerful novel, NDiaye lays outher central themes: familial secrets, power, shame, and liberation. NDiaye is one of the greats—her novels are mesmerizing, wholly singular, completely unforgettable.”—Katie Kitamura, author of Audition
“This [The Witch] is NDiaye at her disquieting best.”—New York Magazine
About Marie NDiaye, Author of The Witch
Marie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France. She is the author of Rosie Carpe, winner of the Prix Femina, and of Three Strong Women, winner of the Prix Goncourt. Her recent novel, Vengeance is Mine, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. She lives in Paris.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Vintage | Penguin Random House
ISBN Trade Paperback 9798217006809
Pub Date: Apr 7, 2026
Titles by Marie NDiaye
Here are other titles by Marie NDiaye spotted by LitStack, including Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye, The Cheffe by Marie NDiaye, and Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye.
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