Marie Redonnet was born on October 19th, 1948. She grew up in France as Martine L'hospitalier, but after the death of her father in 1977, she began a long process of self-reflection during which time she changed her name. Redonnet shed her father's name in favor of her mother's maiden name and changed her first name from Martine to Marie. Her first book was a collection of poems entitled Death Inc. and was published in 1985. Next, the French writer produced a series of short stories published as Doublures (1986). Five plays, six novels, one tale and several critical works soon followed. Redonnet's literary production has been compared to such twentieth-century writers as Sameul Beckett, Marguerite Duras and Franz Kafka; however, all who read her works agree that hers is a highly original and innovative style. According to critic Elizabeth Fallaize, Redonnet describes the writing process as being a violent and rapid activity, in which she can produce an entire text in a period of ten days or so. A blank period follows, after which she produces a new version, again in its entirety. The process is repeated as often as she feels necessary until she has the final version. Her writing practice thus minimizes any immediate consciousness and aesthetic control, and one of the reasons for her eschewal of anything resembling rhetoric or grand phrases is her conviction that this would cut off her writing from its sources. Instead, her writing has a flat tone and a bare, minimalist style which depends a great deal for its effect on the symbolic charge of the language, on significant repetitions, on slight changes of emphasis and on a wry sense of comedy. The written language has a high status within Redonnet's fictional worlds, and words are spent in it with an evident sense of their import and worth. (Elizabeth Fallaize. French Women's Writing: Recent Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. 161)