My first encounter with Marie NDiaye's world was traumatic. It was a production of her play Papa doit manger at the national theatre, the Comédie-Française, in 2003, an event which had been receiving a great deal of publicity in France at the time. As the lights came up and the audience began to applaud, the two women sitting next to me asked me if I was going to be all right. It was an embarrassing situation. Juliet Mitchell provides us with a useful working definition of that over-used term ‘trauma’:

What could I tell these strangers who were so politely inquiring after my well-being? That the play we'd just seen had ripped me wide open? That a ghost had stuck its tongue in my ear? Couldn't they feel it inside them too? They seemed just fine. All the people clapping furiously around us seemed fine, in fact, uplifted – perhaps – by the humour, novelty and charm of the unprecedented multicultural spectacle they had just enjoyed in the house of Molière. Perhaps they were pretending. After all, wasn't that just what I was doing when I eventually reassured the women that I was perfectly all right?