Hèléne Cixous -- author, playwright and French feminist theorist -- is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time.

Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away -- escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso -- works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work:

* love's labours lost and found

* feminine hours

* autobiographies of writing

* the prehistory of the work of art

Stigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.