WIF North America 2026:

Cronos, Linda Lê

Linda Lê

July 3, 1963 (Dalat, Vietnam) - May 9, 2022 (Paris, France)

Born in Vietnam, Linda Lê was schooled in French. She arrived in France in 1977 with her mother, grandmother, and three sisters, as a “boatpeople,” leaving her father behind. She did not see him before he died in 1995. 

After the “bac” in Le Havre, Lê moved to Paris to study literature at the lycée Henri IV and then at the Sorbonne. She published her first novel, Un si tendre vampire, at age 24, followed by two more novels, the two following years. Lê, however, deleted these from her “by the same author” page because they were “written under the influence” (of Swiss intellectual Roland Jaccard).  She gained critical acclaim in 1992 with the fourshort stories in Les Évangiles du crime published at Julliard with Christian Bourgois, whom she followed when he founded his maison.

Before passing in 2022, Lê published close to 30 books (mostly novels but also essays and one play). Lê stands out in contemporary French letters for the complexity of her prose and her “erudite” references (she worked as preface writer for Hachette and contributed to literary magazines and reviews such as Le Magazine littéraire and En attendant Nadeau). Recurring themes in her work are: exile, being and writing “métèque,” madness, suicide, and literature.

In 2015, Linda Lê received the Prince of Monaco prize for her work. 

Cronos (2010) takes place in an imaginary place, Zaroffcity, ruled by the “Grand Guide” Zaroff and Karaci, his Minister of Interior and of Justice, who rules as a dictator. To protect her father, an astrophysicist now plagued with dementia, Una has agreed to marry Karaci. The novel alternates chapters about life in Zaroffcity and letters from Una to her adopted brother, Andréas, a playwright, who fights in the resistance from neighboring Satoripolis. In a nutshell, Una joins the resistance, falls for a revolutionary and gets pregnant, is found out for both transgressions, and despite her pregnancy, is sentenced to death. 

Cronos received the Prix Wepler.

https://bourgoisediteur.fr/catalogue/cronos/

Discussion points include:

• Cronos shows the signs of a totalitarian regime and describes what it is like to live within one. It is in this regard general – in the Great Guide and Karaci, one could recognize Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin, the Duvaliers, Amin Dada, etc.) – and allows for an identification of tell-tale signs and (historical) figures (student activity).

• Because it takes place in a non-descript place at a non-descript time, Cronos lends itself to discussions about “engagement” in the face of governmental and others’ choices (the discussion can extend to the environment for instance).

• Cronos showcases different acts of resistance and invites to reflect on passive vs. active resistance (the scribe Bartleby is a key figure in Lê’s work).

• Its main character, Una, evolves from submission to anger and rebellion and is has been interpreted as an Antigonal figure.

• Its narrative structure.

Works by Linda Lê :

Un si tendre vampire (1987)

Fuir (1988)

 Solo (1989)

Les Évangiles du crime (1992)

Calomnies (1993) - Slander

Le Complexe de Caliban (1995), autobiographical essays

Les Dits d'un idiot (1995)

Marina Tsvetaïeva, comment ca va la vie ? (2002)

Les Trois Parques (1997) – The Three Fates

Voix, une crise (1998)

Lettre morte (1999)

Tu écriras sur le bonheur (1999), series of prefaces

Les Aubes (2000)

Autres jeux avec le feu (2002)

Personne (2003)

Kriss suivi de L’Homme de Porlock (2004), plays

Conte de l’amour Bifrons (2005)

In Memoriam (2007)

Au fond de l’inconnu pour trouver du nouveau (2009), essays

Cronos (2010, Prix Wepler)

À l'enfant que je n'aurai pas (2011, Prix Renaudot-poche) – letter to her unborn son (Claire Debru’s collection)

Lame de fond (2012, Goncourt finalist)

Œuvres vives (2014)

Par ailleurs (exils) (2014)

Roman (2016)

Héroïnes (2017)

Chercheurs d'ombres (2017)

Je ne répondrai plus jamais de rien (2020)

De personne je ne fus le contemporain (2022)

Memento Mori (2023, with Claude Eveno)

For further reading on Linda Lê, see for instance:

• interviews with Karin Schwerdtner (Canada) and Leslie Barnes (Australia).

• books by Michèle Bacholle (Linda Lê, l’écriture du manque, 2006), Alexandra Kurman (Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader, 2016), a chapter by Gloria Kwok in Kate Rose’s Displaced: Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and Trauma (2020).

• articles by Jack Yeager (USA), Karin Schwerdtner (Canada), Leslie Barnes (Australia), Gillian Ni Cheallaigh (UK), Alexandra Kurman (Australia), Tess Do (Australia), and Michèle Bacholle (USA), among others.

by Michèle Bacholle, 5/11/2026