Thérèse Desqueyroux

François Mauriac · 1885–1970 · France

Originally Thérèse Desqueyroux (French)

Why it matters

Acquitted of poisoning her husband, a provincial bourgeois wife must return to the suffocating family and social world that drove her to it. Mauriac's compact masterpiece of guilt, entrapment, and the search for grace.

At a glance

Dense, compressed interiority packed into a very short novel.