On a Woman’s Madness

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature
Winner of the Dutch Literature Prize
Winner of the P. C. Hooft Award

“Astrid Roemer’s writing, in Lucy Scott’s new translation, is lush and sinuous, turning quiet domestic scenes into dreamscapes and cranking up the volume on the many love stories this novel contains. It has taken far too long for On a Woman’s Madness to make it into English—don’t miss it now that it’s here!”
—Lily Meyer, NPR

“Even as our protagonist Noenka worries she is incapable of truly loving others, she forges relationships of striking intensity—and on terms decidedly of her own choosing. Even as she’s weighed upon by ancestral and modern strictures Noenka boldly charts her path through mid-century Suriname…deliciously, sensuously dense.”
—Vox

“The poetic writing can occasionally feel as impenetrable as the lush vegetation that fills several sets — but as deliciously, sensuously dense too. Read this first-ever English translation of a queer classic if you want to feel both the suffering and the promise of a life that is one’s own.” —Caroline Houck, World politics senior deputy editor

“A stunning tale of love and survival anchored by Noenka’s unflagging honesty and Roemer’s embrace of the contradictions, ambiguity, and mystery that characterize real life…The miracle of Roemer’s novel is not only the beauty with which she narrates Noenka’s life but also the strength of spirit displayed by her characters. Finding beauty and love within any imprisonment is a glimpse of the divine in a person. Roemer’s novel glimmers with this holy light even in the darkest night.”
—Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Southwest Review

“Difficult, fragmentary, gorgeous, and at times unpredictable…The novel is saturated with pain, drama, pleasure, and violence, which may rightly invite comparison to classics by Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, although Roemer’s writing style is remarkable in its own right.…The world Noenka lived in didn’t have room for her kind of love or personhood, and she suffered for it. Yet somehow, by the end of the novel, Roemer’s heroine hasn’t abandoned the love she’s suffered for. This seems miraculous, and it is but one reason to be thankful for this long-overdue translation of one of her most important works.”
—Harvard Review

“In On a Woman’s Madness, freedom is not a place but an activity, a kind of restlessness that never settles into safety but still insists upon the necessity of its seeking…The appearance of Roemer’s second novel in English is a major hallmark for the study of contemporary Afrodiasporic literature, and Lucy Scott is to be commended for tackling Roemer’s unsettled and often unsettling prose.”
—Nicholas Rinehart, Words Without Borders

“Roemer makes her English-language debut with this classic of queer Black literature… As Roemer pushes at the boundaries of the senses, she melds biting postcolonial social commentary with a lush dreamscape. Scott’s translation is a gift to English-language readers.”
—Publishers Weekly

“On a Woman’s Madness, like its narrator, refuses to be one thing or another, but lives in the rich realm that lies between binaries, where awe and astonishment thrive. Here, memory and desire, like the serpents who dwell within Roemer’s pages, lurk and coil and crush and consume us. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a novel that so overwhelmed me with pulsing, coursing life.”
—Kent Wascom, author of The New Inheritors

“The legacy of colonialism and slavery affects both Noenka and her nation, Suriname, as she fights to escape her brutish husband and stay with the one she truly loves…The dialogue flows as if from another world: grand and old-fashioned. Noenka’s story unfolds in similar fashion, with dramatic twists and terrible revelations.”
—Foreword Reviews

“Astrid Roemer’s On a Woman’s Madness delights itself in emotional mayhem. Attempting to carve a path to freedom, Noenka is enveloped in crises, devastation, and desire. Refusing an easy reading of family and love and interrogating both physical and political space, Roemer pushes the reader to question form, heritage, and belonging. A story attuned and situated against patriarchal and colonial violence, On a Woman’s Madness reveals the brutality of a world against women.”
—Kaitlynn Cassady, Seminary Co-op Bookstores (Chicago, IL)

“Atmosphere drips off the page in the first English translation of this queer, Dutch classic. The prose is so carefully translated, effortlessly capturing the lush interior world of Noenka’s mind. Set among the cities and plantations of 1980s Suriname, On a Woman’s Madness is filled with snakes, orchids, and a tragic love that will haunt you.”
—Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX)

“The atmosphere of a thriller, combined with the lyrical description of a woman’s inner world, makes On a Woman’s Madness a most exceptional book.”
—Trouw

“The whole book is a headlong search for identity, the identity of all women. Spellbinding prose, like rampant vegetation.”
 —Inge Meijer, Literair Nederland

“Its wealth of sights, scents, and colors and its sensuality, exceptional in Dutch literature, make On a Woman’s Madness a great literary achievement, linked thematically to Louis Couperus…and stylistically to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
—Judges’ report, P.C. Hooft Prize 2016

“With her novels, plays and poems she occupies a unique position in the Dutch-language literature landscape. Her work is unconventional, poetic and experimental and succeeds in linking recent major history and its themes (corruption, tension, guilt, colonization and decolonization) to minor history.”
—Dutch Literature Prize Jury

“‘The Dutch Caribbean literature of the twenty-first century is dominated by female authors. Many of the new female prose writers modeled themselves on the woman who like no other set her seal on the last quarter of the twentieth century: Astrid Roemer.”

—Professor Michiel van Kempen in Women’s Writing from the Low Countries 1880–2010

Additional Materials

• On a Woman’s Madness review, Harvard Review Online
• Video Recording: Astrid Roemer discusses her novel On a Woman’s Madness with Megan Giddings
• Astrid Roemer Exclusive Interview with Two Lines Press
• On a Woman’s Madness Reader’s Guide
• Request an Exam or Desk Copy