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Start giftingThe Mad Women’s Ball
Narrator
Kristin Atherton
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Translator
Frank Wynne
Length
7 hours 15 minutes
Language
English
The Salpêtrière Asylum: Paris, 1885
Dr. Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad and cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated—these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, wayward daughters, or girls born from adulterous relationships.
For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is the Lenten ball—the Madwomen’s Ball—when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpêtrière dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.
Geneviève is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum.
It is because Eugénie has a secret: she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about, The Book of Spirits, Eugénie is determined to escape from the asylum—and the bonds of her gender—and seek out those who will believe in her. And for that she will need Geneviève’s help.
Victoria Mas has a master’s degree in contemporary literature from the Sorbonne. The Mad Women’s Ball, her first novel, is the winner of numerous prizes, including the Prix Stanislas and Prix Renaudot des Lycéens. It has sold more than 175,000 copies in France, with rights sold in twenty-two languages, and it is the basis for the film Le Bal des folles, directed by Mélanie Laurent. Victoria Mas worked in the film industry in the United States, where she lived for eight years, and currently lives in France.
Kristin Atherton is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
Frank Wynne has translated works by Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, and many more writers. He won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2005 for his translation of Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World.
Reviews
“Potent and wicked…a darkly entertaining piece of revisionist feminism.”
“[A] deeply humane, well-researched thriller…short but powerful.”
“Essential reading.”
“Electrifying…a magnetic historical novel.”
“A cri de coeur against the condition of women in this world.”
“Enter the danse of this little masterpiece and let yourself be dazzled.”
“Elegantly blends feminist history and spiritualism and poignantly demonstrates how the hospital is both prison and refuge for its residents.”
“Highlights the plight of powerless women…[when] the burgeoning sciences of psychiatry and neurology exist uneasily alongside spiritualism.”
“[A] darkly delightful Gothic treasure.”
“The Mad Women’s Ball is a darkly sumptuous tale of wicked spectacle, wild injustice, and the insuppressible strength of women…as moving as it is macabre.”
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