Hélène Bessette (1918–2000)

Hélène Bessette was born in Levallois, a suburb of Paris. She married a French pastor, with whom she had two sons. In 1946, the family went as missionaries to New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific, where she taught school and began to write. Her first novel, Marie Désoublie, was published in a local magazine. Hélène and her husband divorced, and she returned to France and worked as a teacher. In 1952, she signed a contract with Gallimard, which published her subsequent 13 books over the next 20 years. She wrote several others that remained unpublished at her death. In 1954, she won the Prix Cazes for her novel Lili Crie, and her later novels regularly appeared on the Prix Goncourt list. She also wrote a play, Le Divorce interrompu. In 1962, she left teaching to devote herself full-time to writing. Despite the fact that her work was admired literary critics and by other writers, including Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, and Simone de Beauvoir, it never caught on with the public. At the end of her life, she sank into obscurity and mental illness. Oddly enough, she was certain that her avant-garde works would be read after her death. In 2006, the publishing firm Éditions Léo Scheer began to reprint some of her novels, including Le Bonheur de la nuit, previously unpublished.