A woman from humble beginnings opens a restaurant in Bordeaux and is awarded a star. What arts did she learn and reinterpret in the kitchen? How did she become a famous chef? In her new novel, Marie NDiaye, the towering stylist, takes the reader on a biographical journey of exploration that becomes more and more of an experience. The narrator, a long-time collaborator of the boss and bound to her in (futile) love, reports on her life - her character, her loves, her training, the art of cooking composition, her private as well as public dealings - by taking up questions and expectations of the reader, answering them and at the same time letting them run into the void: they demand to remain unanswered. The art of Marie NDiaye owes a novel form of biography that demonstrates that only d.