Translingual Life Writing: Vassilis Alexakis, Hélène Cixous, Lydie Salvayre

This article examines how three contemporary authors incorporate multiple languages into their life writing. The three writers have all become celebrated writers in the French language. They are all, however, multilingual. This article shows that, although they have forged their careers on writing monolingually in lyrical French prose, they draw attention to and celebrate their multilingualism in their life writing. It argues that they bring another language into their writing in order to write intimately, personally and confessionally. It demonstrates that they each develop narrative strategies to express their own specific multilingual situation, blending French with Greek, German and Spanish respectively.