Orlanda

Winner of the Prix Medicis, Orlanda is a stunning evocation of a woman who is forced to confront every part of her soul, and embrace herself whole. Emerging out of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Jacqueline Harpman's novel is the story of a woman who finds herself in the body of a lithe 20-year-old male rock journalist who possesses her knowledge, memories, and desires, including her love of men.

JACQUELINE HARPMAN was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929. Being half Jewish, the family moved to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded and returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her medical studies when she contracted tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. She had given up writing after her fourth book was published, and resumed her career as a novelist only some twenty years later.