From the 1950's, with Le Rempart des beguines, La Chambre rouge, Cordelia, Les Mensonges and L'Empire celeste, down into the 1990's, with Adriana Sposa, Divine, Les Larmes, La Maison dont le chien est fou and Sept demons dans la ville, the work of Francoise Mallet-Joris has exercised a very special fascination over a very large readership. The content of her work, ever developing yet faithful to residual, either lived or observed, studied experience, is wide-ranging and unflinching - family relationships, the individual psyche, belief systems that move from quasi-nihilism to the mystical, sexuality, feminine consciousness, creativity, larger social frameworks, etc. - and she can move with ease from portrayal of the hypercontemporary to the researched - and finely imagined - historical reconstruction. Susan Petit, whose lively and elegantly written study addresses all these, and other, factors, argues modestly but wisely that "the works of Mallet-Joris provide stimulating, thought-provoking and coherent ways of apprehending ourselves and our human situation". One need ask no more of an author who, though perhaps personally drawn to certain perspectives, maintains an admirable openness and multiplicity of interrogation of existence.