Madeleine Bourdouxhe (1906 - 1996) was born in Belgium in 1906. La Femme de Gilles (1937) was her first novel. The outbreak of the Second World War interrupted her writing career, and her second novel, Marie, wasn't published until 1943. A collection of short stories, A Nail, A Rose, was her first title to appear in English in 1989.
