Barbara Molinard (19211986) wrote and wrote, but published only one book: a collection of short stories titled Viens. Everything she wrote, she immediately tore up, and it was only through the relentless urging from her husband, the filmmaker Patrice Molinard, and her friend Marguerite Duras, that she finally handed over a single collection of stories to Editions Mercure de France in 1969. Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Abdellah Taa's A Country for Dying, Virginie Despentes's Pretty Things, and Barbara Molinard's Panics.
Startling and surreal. . . . Ramadan's translation is a great gift to readers. -Publisher's Weekly (starred review) Surreal, mesmerizing, and darkly unhinged. -Astra Magazine These surreal, claustrophobic stories bear similarities to the works of Samuel Beckett and Leonora Carrington, but Molinard writes in a voice that is entirely her own... Through Ramadan's spare and exacting translation, Molinard presents a terrifying portrait of violence and mental illness. -The New York Times Notorious for having destroyed most of her writing, Barbara Molinard has given us a sacred gift in Panics. These stories are rendered with a mastery that directly conveys the preciousness of life. At the end, I found myself in a bit of panic, so to speak-how to go on having seen something so gorgeous? -Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez Like the disembodied hands and faceless lovers in these stories, there is as much presented as there is withheld in Panics, Barbara Molinard's singular collection. Marguerite Duras tells us that Molinard destroyed most of her own writing, and I'm fascinated by what's left out, what's left unseen, in this essential text. -Stephanie LaCava, author of I Fear My Pain Interests You To read Barbara Molinard's surreal, tormented, tender, and brutal stories is to dive into the wreck and then witness a singular talent at work. Lucid, horror-drenched, droll, absurd, Panics is perfect reading for the nightmare that is the present. A shriek from the archives, a gift to us all. -Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different With its unique, haunting imagery and Kafkaesque momentum, Panics reads like a series of lucid dreams. A gleaming, razor-sharp book that has lost none of its edge in Emma Ramadan's masterful English translation. -Olivia Baes, cotranslator of Me & Other Writing