Three respectable women

Mary Ndiaye was born in Petiville, near Paris, on June 4, 1967. From a Senegalese father who returned to his homeland when she was in her first year, and she saw him only three times afterward, and a French mother. She grew up in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne, then moved to Normandy after marrying the French writer Jean-Yves Sendre. With the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France in 2007 and the rise of the conservative and far-right in France, the couple decided to move themselves and their children to live in Berlin. The writer did not live in Senegal, but it is clear that her kinship with a Senegalese man she never truly knew has deeply marked her creative world, her way of thinking, and her literary sensitivity. Some characters in her works are African or Black from other regions, embarking on an exciting and arduous return to roots and a bitter search for identity. In most of her novels, she chooses strange, troubled characters shrouded in mystery, on the verge of collapse, or reveals in simple beings almost oblivious to enormous depths and the capacity to transcend their fates that are not limited by borders. To this, there is the writer’s skill in mastering language and her enchanting expressions, coming from exploring great literary works without revealing any influence from them. As for "Three Wise Women," it is distinguished firstly by a special form in the novelistic structure. It contains three long stories, each dedicated to a unique presence of a woman, but the stories are connected by threads, some hidden and others visible, ultimately forming a coherent and harmonious novel. The main unifying thread is this moral or spiritual unity, which gathers three women who control their destiny with intelligence and strength.