Puta

In what was her literary debut, Whore, the Québécois writer Nelly Arcan performs a sublime exercise in autofiction where ideas, emotions and memories follow one another, intertwining in a torrential and violent narrative, to capture the testimony of a luxury prostitute in Montreal, a young woman tired of belonging to men, of being described, invented and fantasized only by them. Presented in the form of a disturbing confession to her psychoanalyst, Arcan's harrowing story is not the fruit of sordid exhibitionism or self-pity; on the contrary, it is a text of sociological and philosophical reflection that offers a radical reading of the relationship between the sexes, while showing the fears and obsessions of a woman who defies all social structures and consciously puts on a mask to protect and redefine herself on their own terms.