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Crazy Genie

Crazy Genie

by Inès Cagnati, translated from the French by Liesl Schillinger

$16.95
$16.95
Available as E-Book French Literature
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The April 2026 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club

Marie lives with her mother, Genie, in a ramshackle house by a willow-lined river in rural France. Every morning, Genie walks to the neighboring farms to do what work there is to be done. When farmers and villagers greet her, she says nothing, and keeps walking. Once, she was a lighthearted girl from the best family in the valley; now they all call her “Crazy Genie.” While her mother works, Marie waits, yearning for her mother to notice her, longing for the moment when they will be back in their lonely house by the river.

Told in Marie’s ingenuous, straightforward voice, Crazy Genie is the second novel by Inès Cagnati, who grew up in poverty in rural France in the 1940s, the child of Italian immigrant agricultural workers. Rich in observation and detail, and devastating in its portrayal of a child’s unconditional love and of society’s callous prejudices, Crazy Genie, together with her first novel, Free Day, confirms Cagnati's astonishing power as a writer.

Additional Book Information

Series: NYRB Classics
ISBN: 9798896230205
Pages: 160
Publication Date:

Praise

Part fairy tale, part incantation, this devastatingly beautiful story teeters between innocence and menace. The young narrator must interpret her elusive, impenetrable mother by paying vigilant close attention, and the result is a story of exquisite observation, taut with longing, in a landscape pulsing with terrors real and imagined. I held my breath until the final word.
— Sonya Walger

Inès Cagnati's debut Free Day is the only novel I recommend to everyone I know. I have prayed for another Cagnati translation, and I am grateful Liesl Schillinger has now brought Crazy Genie to us. Here Cagnati summons another unshakable voice to tell a story that is brutal, pure, and alive. Here is the violence of rural poverty and rejection. Here is how imagination survives.
—Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

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