Sylvie Weil

Translated by Ros Schwartz

Published 25 June 2019

Listed in Granta’s Top Reads 2019 non-fiction

Sylvie Weil gives a playful twist to the concept of self-representation: taking her cue from self-portraits by women artists, ranging from the 13th c. through the Renaissance to Frida Kahlo and Vivian Maier, Weil has written a memoir in pieces, where each picture acts as a portal to a significant moment from her own life and sparks anecdotes tangentially touching on topical issues: from the Palestinian question to the pain of a mother witnessing her son’s psychotic breakdown, to the subtle manifestations of anti-Semitism, to ageism, genetics, and a Jewish dog...

Read an excerpt on Granta
Listen to Sylvie Weil discussing Selfies with Jennifer Jazz on their podcast, Letters Off Paper
See reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, Splice and more.

‘A new genre is born: the short selfie collection! Lively, inventive, compassionate, aching, morally complex and troubling, I loved these self-portraits more than anything I’ve read lately.’ — Lauren Elkin

‘A beguiling series of vignettes, by turns wry, amusing and disturbing, inspired by self-portraits by women artists and reflecting on the images they provoke. An illuminating survey of the author's various identities, in a fractured world, as mother, lover and writer.’ — Michèle Roberts

‘In Selfies Sylvie Weil uses a work of an artist to set the theme for a snapshot of a past episode in her life. These selfies are exquisite vignettes - intelligent, witty, observant, sometimes poignant, and beautifully written - the elegance of the original French apparent in this fine English translation.’ — Piers Paul Read

‘If yesteryear's painted self-portraits were as concerned with pose and presentation as are today's phone selfies, Sylvie Weil is the ideal analyst of what may lie behind the image. In a sequence of transpositions of the work of women portraitists from the Renaissance onwards, she applies their appearance to her experience, and implies a continuity in women's self-presentation. Like them, Sylvie Weil has an illustrious heritage (daughter to André a brilliant and renowned mathematician; niece to Simone, a brilliant and renowned philosopher). Unlike them, she moves from the visual to the verbal, expressive of both profound truth and imagination.’ — Amanda Hopkinson

160 pages
paperback with French flaps, 197 x 130 mm
isbn 978-1-9993318-2-5

NB: For orders to the EU, please contact us about your local retailers, or order through an alternative UK online retailer

Front cover photograph: VIVIAN MAIER, Self-portrait, New York, NY, 1955 © Estate of Vivian Maier, courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
'Book Face' photo © Dominic Lee, 2019