This is the story of a married woman, then left, who goes back to her mother’s on Christmas Eve and tries to take it well. It’s the story of a woman about to spend a not-so-easy Christmas Eve. It’s the story of a woman unlike others—but doing just fine, thank you—who refuses to give in to the dictates of secondary sexual characteristics.
Tania de Montaigne is a novelist and journalist. She is the author of Noire, la vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin (2015), winner of the Prix Simone Veil 2015, and L’Assignation, les Noirs n’existent pas (2018), winner of the Prix de la laïcité 2018. Noire, la vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin was adapted for the stage by Stéphane Foenkinos in 2019. The book was also adapted into a graphic novel by Émilie Plateau (Dargaud, 2019) and into an immersive augmented-reality exhibition inaugurated at the Centre Pompidou in April 2023. L’Assignation, les Noirs n’existent pas was adapted for the stage in a production created at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in 2021. It also inspired a documentary broadcast on France 5 in May 2023. Her latest novel, Sensibilités, was published in 2023, and her latest essay, Un violent désir de chaleur humaine, was released in January 2026.
