Ingratitude
ABOUT
THE BOOK
All her life, Yan-Zi has been dominated by her mother, who scolds her, corrects her behaviour and manners, urges her to adopt bourgeois mores, and ceaselessly reminds her that her very life is a debt she owes to others, especially her mother. So Yan-Zi decides to commit suicide in order to shake off the yoke of her mother’s love. In this novel she tells the story of her last days with a cool, cruel detachment that recalls Camus’s The Stranger. Ying Chen has unearthed some of the violence buried within our family lives. In strong, direct, transparent prose, Ingratitude gives voice to universal truths about the relationships between children and their parents.
Original title in French L’ingratitude published by Lémeac Éditeur (1995)
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Carol
Volk
Carol Volk is a French literary translator, former U.S. diplomat, writer and editor with a distinguished career spanning literature and international affairs.
She has translated more than 30 literary and scholarly works by French and francophone authors. Her work has been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Henry Holt, The New Press, and Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Columbia, and Nebraska university presses, and excerpted in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and elsewhere. She is a founding board member of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network (DC-ALT) and recently joined the board of the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley (WACMHV).
In 2025, she concluded a successful career as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service (“Bio”) after assignments in Rabat, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, Rome and DC. She and her husband have two grown sons, and live in the Hudson Valley.
Carol Volk is a French literary translator, former U.S. diplomat, writer and editor with a distinguished career spanning literature and international affairs.
She has translated more than 30 literary and scholarly works by French and francophone authors. Her work has been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Henry Holt, The New Press, and Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Columbia, and Nebraska university presses, and excerpted in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and elsewhere. She is a founding board member of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network (DC-ALT) and recently joined the board of the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley (WACMHV).
In 2025, she concluded a successful career as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service (“Bio”) after assignments in Rabat, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, Rome and DC. She and her husband have two grown sons, and live in the Hudson Valley.